Cynicus

Martin Anderson, (1854 – 14 April 1932), better known by his pseudonym Cynicus, was a Scottish artist, political cartoonist, postcard illustrator, and publisher.

Martin Anderson was born in Leuchars, Fife, in 1854. After his mother, Margaret Martin, separated from his father, she moved with her children to Cambuslang, Glasgow. Anderson studied at Glasgow School of Art under Robert Greenlees, in Ingram Street Glasgow. On leaving he worked as a designer at a calico printer.

When he was 19, he founded The St. Mungo Art Club in Glasgow, intended to be an alternative to the grander Glasgow Art Club. In 1877 he began to provide small illustrations for serial stories in the short-running "News of the Week". In 1878 his painting "The Music Lesson" was accepted for the Royal Scottish Academy's annual exhibition. In 1879, age 24, he decided to move to London, ("to study art proper" he explained in an 1894 interview in The Sketch).

In 1880 he was invited to join John Leng and Co., (the publisher of titles such as the Dundee Advertiser, the Evening Telegraph, Peoples Journal, and Peoples Friend), as its staff artist. Accepting the position, Andersen became the first such artist to be employed by any daily newspaper in Britain (until then daily newspapers were un-illustrated). He moved to Broughty Ferry near Dundee.

In 1881, as a freelance artist, he began contributing cartoons and illustrations to the comic weekly "The Quiz", an imitation of the magazine "Punch". For his illustrations in The Quiz he used the pseudonym "bob", but in November 1887 he adopted a second pseudonym, that of "Cynicus", and began to move away "from the safe and trivial to the dangerous and powerful realm of politics".

A series of cartoons titled The Satires of Cynicus appeared in The Quiz in 1888. In 1890 he decided to publish a collected edition of his more controversial subjects. The Quiz cartoons were redrawn in a larger size and hand coloured. They were published in six monthly parts, each part containing two full-page cartoons. However, they did not sell well.

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