Sep 29, 2016 - Sale 2423

Sale 2423 - Lot 254

Price Realized: $ 12,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
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 1/4x22 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.

Additional Details

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."