Other Artists named Wales, Part 2: James Albert Wales (1852-1886)

I find it interesting when I discover other artists from American history with the last name of Wales. I'm not sure if they are related to me or not -- possibly they are "shirt-tail relations". My son Dan discovered this one in an Encylcopedia of Biography at school. James Albert Wales was a cartoonist! That book said that "he was tall and ruddy-faced, with a silky turned-up moustache and wore pince-nez." His photograph is below.

The info below is from the Ohio's Yesterdays website, including some of his cartoons.

For 19th-century Americans, politics was entertainment. There was no TV, radio, cable, video, or You Tube, but just the same, everyone knew what was happening. Newspapers and political journals, like Harper's Weekly, Judge, Puck, and Frank Leslie's, were read and shared at general stores, taverns, and blacksmith shops, - wherever people gathered. Those who could read, read to those who couldn't. Key to forming their arguments and shaping their opinions were the wildly popular political cartoons featured in every issue. They were understood by everyone!

Created by skilled imaginative artists, the cartoons attacked politicians, presidents, and policies with wit, humor, and intelligence. Through delightful caricatures, they poked fun at society's extremes of poverty and wealth, corruption and reform. Most influential was Thomas Nast, but among the prominent was Sandusky County's own James Albert Wales.

Born before the Civil War, Wales grew up in Clyde, drawing on the counters at his father’s fish market. After a short stint at a Sandusky business school, Wales headed for Toledo where he learned engraving and then to Cincinnati to improve his drawing skills. Wales paid his dues, working for a time in Cleveland and then Chicago, where he found his niche. But his ambitions were quickly snuffed out by the Chicago Fire.

It was in Cleveland, while working for the Leader during the 1872 presidential campaign, that Wales got his first taste of success. Wales soon found himself in New York, drawing for the nationally recognized Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly - the first American venture to bring together news and images. Wales then spent a year in London, drawing for illustrated journals and studying in Paris. Shortly after his return, Wales was hired by cartoonist Joseph Keppler, editor of the popular Puck.

It was during his years at Puck that Wales established himself as one of the foremost political cartoonists. Gifted at caricatures and portraiture, Wales created a full page political cartoon series that he titled Puck’s Pantheon. He soon was drawing double-page spreads and front and back covers that influenced Americans' thinking on social and political issues.

In 1881, following disagreements with Keppler, Wales left to become one of the founders and chief cartoonist of The Judge. After a strong start, Wales found himself in financial difficulty. And in 1885, he sold the magazine and returned to Puck.

With financial backing from the Republican Party, The Judge began to thrive and soon passed its rival in popularity. Unfortunately, its founder, James A. Wales, would never see his creation reach its full potential – or perhaps his own. He died within the year of a heart attack – at the young age of 34. Interestingly, Wales was the only native-born American to achieve national prominence as a political cartoonist during the Gilded Age.

This is not the New York Stock Exchange. It is the patronage Exchange, called U.S. Senate.

The biographical encyclopedia says that "there is little question that if he had lived he would have been recognized as one of the foremost American caricaturists."

(You can see from this cartoon that he sometimes signed his name JAW).

Other Artists named Wales

A search from Google reveals some other artist's named Wales. I'm not sure if they are any relation or not. My family is descended from Nathaniel Wales, a ship's carpenter who sailed from England to the new world in the late 1600's. We have a family tree notebook, and there's at least one Nathaniel or Nathan in every generation. I'll have to look into it more to see if they're related. They might be shirt-tail relations!

This 1806 naive portrait is attributed to an artist named Nathaniel Wales. The title of the painting is Portrait of Captain Nathan Sage, as are the paintings below.

I think it's interesting that there was a marine artist named George Canning Wales (1868-1940). This is what I was able to find out about him online, along with some of his etchings:
George Canning Wales' passion was for ships and the sea. As a youth, he was around the wharves in Boston before the steam ships replaced the romantic sailing vessels. In his own words, he sketched obsessively the ships that arrived in the Boston area, recording the ships and their riggings. He spent the mid-part of his life as a professional architect before turning to printmaking around his fiftieth birthday. His early love of ships and the sea is present in his etchings and lithographs.

George C. Wales was born in Boston in 1868. He studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1885-88. His first job was with the architects, Peabody & Stearns; founded his own architectural firm in Boston 1893-1924; studied etching in 1917 with William M. Paxton; and produced his first etchings that year. He studied and mastered lithography in 1923. His first exhibition was held at Goodspeed's Book Shop in 1921. The venerable, but now closed, Boston gallery and book store published a catalogue raisonne of the artist's prints in 1927. His prints are in the permanent collections of many museums and institutions including The Boston Public Library, Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Peabody Museum, Old Dartmouth Historical Society, The British Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, and the U. S. Naval Academy.