Percy Leo Crosby was an author, illustrator and cartoonist, whose most famous comic was Skippy (1923-45). In 1931, Skippy was made into a movie, which won an Oscar for director Norman Taurog. He studied at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in New York. Crosby began his career as a sports columnist and illustrator for the New York Globe. In the middle of the 1940s he was diagnosed with severe alcoholism, and lost his company, his family, and his work. In 1948, after the death of his mother, he survived a suicide attempt and was declared schizophrenic. After that, he tried several times to sell new manuscripts and drawings, but with no success. He then was falsely imprisoned in a New York mental hospital for the last 16 years of his life, before dying on his 73rd birthday after months in a coma, caused by a heart attack. The figure Skippy is considered an important inspiration for the Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz.
Crosby submitted only one painting in 1932, and this one only “Hors concours”. Unfortunately, no copy of The Home Stretch could be found. All other entries were drawings, including the silver medal-winning Jack-Knife. With a few lines, it shows the essence of a figure performing this jump. Probably the other sheets were also initially drawings, and at least some of them were later converted into lithographs. The formats were, as far as we know, between A4 and A3 size. Crosby preferred sports such as American football and polo, but also drew scenes of athletics, gymnastics, figure skating and others.
United States