Homer Davenport

Homer Calvin Davenport was a political cartoonist and writer from the United States. He is known for drawings that satirized figures of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, most notably Ohio Senator Mark Hanna. Although Davenport had no formal art training, he became one of the highest paid political cartoonists in the world. Davenport also was one of the first major American breeders of Arabian horses and one of the founders of the Arabian Horse Club of America.

Davenport was born in 1867 in the Waldo Hills, several miles south of Silverton, Oregon. His parents were Timothy Woodbridge and Florinda Willard Davenport. He had an older sister, Orla, and his parents had previously lost two other children in infancy. Timothy Davenport was one of the founders of the Republican Party in Oregon and served as an Oregon state representative, state senator, and an Indian agent. He ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 1874. Florinda was an admirer of the political cartoons of Thomas Nast that appeared in Harpers Weekly. While pregnant with Homer, she developed a belief, which she viewed as a prophecy, that her child would become as famous a cartoonist as Nast. She was also influenced by the essay How To Born A Genius, by Russell Trall, and closely followed his recommendations for diet and concentration during her pregnancy. She died of smallpox in 1870, when Homer was three years old, and on her deathbed asked her husband

Source: Wikipedia