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WINSOR McCAY.
“200 Million Light Years.” Editorial illustration published in the
Milwaukee Sentinel
on
Sunday, March 22, 1931. Pen and ink on thin board. 260x559 mm; 10
1
/
4
x22 inches. Signed
in lower right image. Provenance: Gifted to Woody Gelman by Robert Winsor McCay
Jr., after Gelman helped publish a book about Winsor McCay Sr. and the
Little Nemo in
Slumberland
comic strips in the 1970s; the remainder of Gelman’s collection was donated
to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.
[4,000/6,000]
This image was accompanied by the caption:“Here you see the feeble eye of primitive man contrasted
with the super-eye of a 200-inch telescope soon to be erected at Pasadena, on the Pacific coast. Our
early ancestors marveled, shivering with dread at the eclipse of sun or moon. But a little incident
like that, right in our ‘solar front yard,’ does not interest this great 200-inch telescope, or the modern
astronomers that will use it.This giant COSMIC EYE will look out millions of ‘light years’ into
space, endless billions and trillions of miles, to far off nebulae which are ‘separate universes.’ Man in
himself is a feeble thing, here for a moment, then gone. But the human race, striving on the earth,
never ceasing for more than forty million years past, is a powerful race. And the brain of man is a
wonderful creation.”