This Week's Sneak Peek, and Update

First of all, here's a snippet from this week's upcoming cartoon:

Secondly, thank you to reader Bob Harris for uncovering the background information of caricaturist Alberto Barreto, whose rendition of Fighting Bob LaFollette headlined my post here on Saturday.

The Washington (DC) Times Herald devoted an entire page to wunderkind Barreto on Sunday, March 25, 1923:

"Peruvian Boy Artist Clever As Caricaturist" in Washington Times-Herald, March 25, 1923

According to the article by Victor Flambeau (caricatured to the right of Thomas Edison above), Barreto had already achieved "very remarkable success in his native city, where he was already recognized as a leading illustrator," before coming to New York in 1917 at the age of 18. He apparently came to the attention of the Times-Herald when he exhibited a collection of his political caricatures in D.C. in 1922.

"I had always been very much interested in art since I was a kid," Barreto told Flambeau, "and I was reading many books in artistic anatomy, color, perspective, and so forth." He took a single art class with Julio Malaga Grenet, the Peruvian cartoonist who was Director of Art at the weekly magazine Caras y Caretas in Buenos Aires. His cartoons were published in La Prensa of Lima even though he thought his work wasn't yet fit for publication.

Photo of Alberto Barreto at work, with his sister, in Washington Times-Herald, March 25, 1923

His mother and sister followed him to New York in 1919 after the death of his father. He had by then set up his own art school.

Barreto was enthusiastic about life in the U.S. according to the Times-Herald article. "All my success, I believe, has been due to the great artistic spirit and kindness of the Washington people. It makes me feel very happy, the great understanding that exists among people here.... 

"I also feel very much obliged to the Times-Herald and other newspapers that have contributed so much to my success by the wonderful way they have criticized my work. Art critics might say, 'They are so crude,' but that has not been the case. They have been wonderfully nice to me."

It will take some further digging to find out whatever became of him. Was he the Alfredo Barreto who managed the Washington Herald Bridge League in 1934? Was he the Alfredo Barreto who launched Neighbors, a "Magazine of the Americas," at a party attended by several Latin American diplomats in D.C., in 1937?