Richard F. Outcault
American cartoonist (1863-1928)
Richard Felton Outcault (; January 14, 1863 – September 25, 1928) was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the series The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown and is considered a key pioneer of the modern comic strip.
Life and career
Early life and education
Outcault was born on January 14, 1863, in Lancaster, Ohio, to Catherine Davis and Jesse P. Outcalt—spelled without the u their son later added. He attended the McMicken School of Design in Cincinnati from 1878 to 1881, and after graduating did commercial painting for the Hall Safe and Lock Company.
Early career
Outcault painted electric light displays for Edison Laboratories for the 1888 Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Middle Atlantic States in Cincinnati. This led to full-time work with Edison in West Orange, New Jersey, doing mechanical drawings and illustrations. Edison appointed him official artist for the company's traveling exhibition in 1889–90, which included supervising the installation of Edison exhibits at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. While there, he studied art in the Latin Quarter and added the u to his surname.
In 1890 Outcault returned to the US, married, and moved to Flushing in New York City. He worked making technical drawings to Street Railway Journal and Electrical World, a magazine owned by one of Edison's friends.
“Richard F. Outcault” enters the record as american cartoonist (1863-1928). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richard, Outcault and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Richard F. Outcault” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Richard, Outcault and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q737068. VIAF identifies the subject as 51694057. The Library of Congress control number is n85151596. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1863, 1928, 1878 and 1881.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Richard F. Outcault”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Richard F. Outcault primary sources, Richard F. Outcault archive and Richard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Richard F. Outcault”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Richard F. Outcault” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.