Walking into the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, we are immediately struck by the breadth of work by Denys Wortman (1887–1958). This painter turned illustrator was immensely prolific, producing a new drawing 312 days a year, six days a week, for 30 years. They appeared in New York’s World-Telegram & Sun, and were also syndicated nationally, including in Boston and Worcester. “They would be in some 100 newspapers across the country,” says the artist’s son, Denny Wortman. “He was thought of as top dog,” Jules Feiffer told me, ‘When I was a kid, that’s who I always looked for.’”

The exhibit, on view through Sept. 6, features Denny’s collection of his father’s work. 

Although Denys always loved drawing, his mother encouraged him to become a painter. “She wanted him to be the next Rembrandt,” Denny explains. He studied and worked alongside such renowned 20th century artists as John Sloan, Edward Hopper, and George Bellows, and he even exhibited in the famous modern art Armory Show of 1913. Among his three paintings on display is an expressive 1935 canvas, “Gay Head Cliffs,” where the colors and visible brushstrokes evoke the very essence of the landscape.

But Denys ultimately found painting frustrating. “Dad always had trouble finishing the painting. When was it done? He saw a psychiatrist about it, who told him, ‘You’re the kind of guy who is a doer. You need something that, at the end of the day, you are done.” So, cartoons fit the bill. “He loved it. He told me that if he could pick any job on earth, he had it.”

Denny remarked about his father’s richly detailed observational work, “It was life as you would see it.” Images from his New York City years, beginning in 1924, show everything from crowded stoops of working-class people to two rather plump women of a certain age sitting in a gallery that looks like the Metropolitan Museum. The accompanying dialogue captures Denys’ humor: “This is the coolest place in town, if you don’t let the pictures bother you.” 

Denys drew his cartoons with square lithographic crayons, black carbon pencil, and ink. Although each line mattered, he was not a minimalist. Instead, he captured the specifics of his surroundings, which is easy to see in the Vineyard work. “Dad started coming in 1890, when he was 3,” Denny explains. “His folks bought a house on Waban Park. Around 1932, my parents got a place in Chilmark. They would come in the summers, and then moved here year-round in 1941. Every Monday, Dad would take six drawings to the Post Office and mail them, and three weeks later, they appeared in newspapers across the country.” Interestingly, there is a cartoon in the show of Alley’s General Store with a sign above that reads, “West Tisbury Post Office.” 

Another Vineyard work features Denys’ beloved vagabond friends Mopey Dick and the Duke, who frequently commented on American life. With Edgartown’s Old Whaling Church in the background, the Duke, driving a motorcycle with Mopey Dick in the sidecar, stops to speak to a farmer, who carries a hoe and rake over his shoulder: “What, a town without a library? Where do you go to take a nap?” There is also a delightful one of two women sitting on the porch of an Oak Bluffs gingerbread cottage, with one explaining to the other: “My husband isn’t going to take any time off this summer, so the only way he could get a change was for me to go away.”

Denys and his wife, Hilda, were keen observers of everyday life. Hilda, in particular, would help generate ideas for him. Denny recalls, “They were a team. She helped a great deal. I don’t think he could have done it without her. She would ride the subways, or go to Washington Square Park in the Village, and listen.” Something Hilda might hear on a park bench, for instance, could show up in the next day’s captions. Both of them also took photographs that Denys would later use as visual references.

In Martha’s Vineyard, Denys reconnected with Thomas Hart Benton, whom he had previously known in New York. In 1953, Benton challenged Wortman to an artistic duel to see who could paint a better portrait of the other. Denys was hesitant, but according to Benton’s biographer, Polly Burroughs, he said, “Sitting for hours with that pirate glowering at me with his super-analytical stare and his sketchbook was too much for me. I had to defend myself.” The resulting portraits were displayed side by side at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s Thomas Hart Benton exhibit in 2019. 

The show at the M.V. Playhouse is just one of many examples of Denys’ impressive work. The Museum of the City of New York, the Museum of American Illustration, and Danforth Museum of Art have all hosted solo exhibitions featuring his work. Additionally, both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library possess a complete set of his illustrations.

Norman Rockwell said of the artist, “One thing I have always admired so much about the work of Denys Wortman is that he is technically so attuned to his subject matter. Certainly, his work has contributed a great deal to [making] us understand many interesting types of people.”