Robert Sidney Smith, known as Sidney Smith, was the comic-strip artist from Illinois.
Background
Robert was born on February 13, 1877 in Bloomington, Illinois, United States, the son of Thomas H. Smith, a dentist, and Frances A. (Shafer) Smith. After he grew up he discarded his first name. His father wanted Sidney to be a dentist also, but the boy's only interest was in drawing.
Education
Smith never finished high school. "To be a dentist, " he wrote in after life, "I had to study, and school and I never agreed: they didn't teach drawing where I went" (American Magazine). He did well to follow his natural bent.
Career
He began drawing cartoons for his hometown newspaper when he was 18.
He sold some pictures to the Bloomington Sunday Eye. Securing no regular position, he went on a lecture tour, giving "chalk talks. " From these, he said, he got little money but gained some good experience.
His first real job as an artist was with the Indianapolis News. Later he worked for the Indianapolis Press, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post, the Pittsburgh Press, the Indianapolis Sentinel, and the Toledo News-Bee. His signature or trademark was a drawing of a goat, which eventually became a full-size comic character, Old Doc Yak. The goats (for there were others) and Smith sustained each other for about fifteen years.
In 1911 he joined the staff of the Chicago Daily Tribune. He took Old Doc with him, but drew other series also. Among the more successful were "Light Occupations", "The Bunk of a Busy Brain" and "Self-Made Heroes. " The Andy Gump series was begun in 1917.
Smith had aroused and he held the greatest public interest ever accorded comic-strip characters. In 1918 he published Book of the Gumps, and in 1924, Andy Gump, His Life Story.
He maintained an estate at Lake Geneva, Illinois, and met his death in an automobile collision near Harvard, Illinois, a few hours after having signed a three-year contract with a two-year option thereafter for $150, 000 a year.