Page Title
FREDERICK OTTO SEIBEL PAPERS
M 23
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES DEPARTMENT
JAMES BRANCH CABELL LIBRARY
VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
Compiled by
Martha M. Hall
April 1981
Revised
March 1987
May 1990
November 1994
Accession Number: 90-May-42
Size: 16.9 linear feet plus oversize material
Location: Stacks and oversize drawers
Provenance: The original collection was a gift to the Department by Mrs. Helen McCarthy in July 1970. Additional Seibel materials were donated to the Department and integrated with this collection by various individuals over the years.
Restrictions: None
Literary Property Rights:
NUCMC: 83-1143
BIOGRAPHY:
Frederick Otto Seibel was born in Durhamville, New York, on 8 October 1886 and died in Richmond, Virginia on 19 June 1968. Siebel spent his childhood drawing sketches of the Erie Canal. He was married with no children. After Attending classes at the Art Students League in New York City for a short time. Seibel started his own commercial art business in the early years of the twentieth century. His first cartoon was printed in the Oneida Dispatch in 1908. He began his career as a cartoonist in 1916 for the Knickerbocker Press in Albany, New York. Seibel moved to Virginia in 1926 to become an editorial cartoonist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and has been there for over thirty years. He did several shows at Metropolitan Museum Of New York, Art Institute of Chicago and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. A biography is contained in the Spring 1977 of the Virginia Cavalcade (included in Box 1). Fred O. Seibel died in 1968 after completing nearly 16,000 cartoons. Most famous cartoon "Retreat from Moscow" (11-5-1936) depicting presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith as Napoleon after FDR's landslide victory in 1936.
SCOPE AND CONTENT:
The Seibel Collection is comprised of two major sections: letters which Seibel received relating to his newspaper cartoons (including correspondence from Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Robert Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, Harry F. Byrd, John L. Lewis, J. Edgar Hoover and numerous members of the federal and state government), and a complete set of his published cartoons from both the Knickerbocker Press and the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Other items in the collection include drawing notebooks and early art school sketches, seven oil paintings thought to have been painted by Seibel, folios containing copies of sketches by Charles Dana Gibson and Frederic Remington, as well as folios containing newspaper clippings of major world events in Seibel's lifetime. There are also thirty-four original cartoons, some of which were autographed by Seibel.
ARRANGEMENT:
The Special Collections and Archives Department has 34 Original Cartoons, some inscribed, Seibel's own clipping file, early drawings, oils and watercolors and some correspondence.
The collection is divided into two groups: Seibel's oil paintings, folios, and oversized cartoons are stored separately; the newspaper copies of his cartoons and boxed in groups of fifty and are arranged, with few exceptions, chronologically. The cartoons were cut and numbered by Seibel in the order in which they were published, and that numerical order has been preserved.
Box 1
Folder 1 Biography Virginia Cavalcade, Spring 1977
2 1908 Yearbook (Oneida High School)
3 German Notebook
4 School exercise book
5 Notebook, various topics
6 Notebook 1912-1919
7 Notebook 1912-1921
8 Notebook of quotations
9 Notes on caricature and cartooning 1915
10 Nags Head materials
11 Commemoration booklet of assassination of McKinley
12 Miscellaneous newsclippings
13 Ephemera
14 Correspondence: Crow letters
15 Correspondence: Byrd, Harry F., Sr. 1926-1949
16 Correspondence: Byrd, Harry F., Sr. 1950-1962
17 Correspondence: A 1922-1952
18 Correspondence: B 1916-1955
19 Correspondence: C 1924-1954
20 Correspondence: D 1921-1951
21 Correspondence: E 1917-1952
22 Correspondence: F 1910-1950
23 Correspondence: G 1904-1965
23-A Correspondence: Goldwater, Barry 1965
24 Correspondence: H 1919-1959
24-A Correspondence: Hoffa, James R. 1959
24-B Correspondence: Hoover, J. Edgar 1940
25 Correspondence: I 1938
26 Correspondence: J 1930-1956
27 Correspondence: K 1916-1961
27-A Correspondence: Kennedy, Robert F. 1961
28 Correspondence: L 1933-1949
29 Correspondence: M 1929-1956
30 Correspondence: N 1919-1952
31 Correspondence: O 1935-1940
32 Correspondence: P 1917-1958
33 Correspondence: R 1931-1967
33-A Correspondence: Roosevelt, Franklin D. 1930
34 Correspondence: S 1930-1959
35 Correspondence: T 1930-1967
35-A Correspondence: Truman, Harry S. 1954
36 Correspondence: U 1932-1940
37 Correspondence: V 1931-1947
38 Correspondence: W 1916-1949
39 Correspondence: Y 1935-1937
40 Correspondence: Z 1937-1938
Box 1-A
Fred Seibel name plate for desk
Two WRVA phonographs - recording of Seibel
Box 2
Folder 1-32 Cartoons: Knickerbocker Press (1908-1919)
Box 3
Folder 1-33 Cartoons: Knickerbocker Press 1919-1926
Box 4
Folder 1-24 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1926-1929
Box 5
Folder 1-26 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1929-1933
Box 6
Folder 1-26 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1933-1937
Box 7
Folder 1-29 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1937-1941
Box 8
Folder 1-29 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1941-1946
Box 9
Folder 1-28 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1946-1950
Box 10
Folder 1-26 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1950-1954
Box 11
Folder 1-27 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1954-1959
Box 12
Folder 1-26 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1959-1965
Box 13
Folder 1-15 Cartoons: Richmond Times-Dispatch 1965-1968
Oversize listing as follows:
Seibel Cartoon Collection
Folder 1
Scrapbooks
Cartoons:
Upheld!
The Lightning Strikes in Normandy (6/7/44)
The Talks of Peace (December 1917)
The Pipe of Peace (May 1919)
Speaking of Preparedness (December 1916)
An Uncomfortable Position (October 1916)
He Kept Us Out of War (October 1916)
Folder 2
The Brick Block
Durhamville Union School
Sketch of Sculpture
The President of Humanity (January 1917)
Gathering Walnuts (Nov. 1916)
First Airplane to Fly Across the Atlantic (May 1919)
Now He Belongs to History (Feb. 1919)
Man Lost! (Nov. 1918)
"And Byngo Was His Name"
1787-the Constitution-1919
the Hereafter (1919)
What the Wise Ones Will be Doing this Spring (March 1917)
The Eagle's Brood (July 1917)
In the Lion's Mouth (March 21, 1918)
Wanted-An Elastic Dollar (August 1919)
When Politics Didn't Trouble You (Oct. 1916)
Mother Nature's School (1916)
A Bad Landing (Aug. 1919)
Folder 3
Print of Man Being Drawn by a Bird (Self Portrait)
Folder 4
Will it Come to this? (9/12/63)
Part of a Cartoon: Virginia Voters sign by Man holding bow and arrows
Folder 5
We Have with Us Today (10/5/66)
Out of this World, And Back (5/7/61)
Folder 6
Fall Weather is Around the Corner, Too! (9/23/31)
Part of a Cartoon About Politics (Woman Sitting in a heart with 2 men on
either side
The Start/The Finish
Certificate honoring Frederick Olto Seibel (May 19, 1927)
Certificate honoring Frederick O. Seibel (Nov. 16, 1934)
Print of a gathering of people (comic)
The Sun is Getting Higher Every Day (April 7, 1938)
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