Reg Smythe (1917-1998)
Born in Hartepool, Reg Smythe left school at fourteen to work as a butcher’s delivery boy. After two years, he was made redundant and remained unemployed until he joined the army in 1936. At the end of the Second World War, he joined the Post Office as a general clerk and, through a chance meeting was introduced to an artists’ agent who offered to sell his drawings on the condition that he produce thirty in a week; he had the ready in five days. By drawing sixty cartoons each week he frequently had work published and developed a disciplined approach which has held him in good stead ever since. Reg was encouraged by one of his favourite cartoonists, Styx of the Daily Mirror, so that, following a probationary period, he became cartoonist of the newspaper’s section titled ‘Laughter at Work’. IN 1957, he was asked to create a new character for the Northern editions of the Mirror, and so produced his alter ego, the phenomenally popular Andy Capp. An exhibition of Andy Capp cartoons, from the period 1957-1972, was held in 1993 at the Centre for Cartoon Studies at the university of Kent at Canterbury. Smythe returned to his hometown of Hartepool in 1976, and lived there until his death on 13 June 1998.
8 & 10 Ryder Street, St James’s, London SW1Y 6QB
gallery@chrisbeetles.com
020 7839 7551
© Chris Beetles Ltd 2024 | Accessibility | Privacy | Sitemap
