Achile - The sailor

Watch Out ! Are you ready?

Looking for something special?

Bid on this unique artwork by Achil french artist.

Achille The Sailor
Thimble Theatre and Popeye comic strips

Segar's Thimble Theatre debuted in the New York Journal on December 19, 1919. The paper's owner, William Randolph Hearst, also owned King Features Syndicate, which syndicated the strip. Thimble Theatre was intended as a replacement for Midget Movies by Ed Wheelan (Wheelan having recently resigned from King Features). While initially failing to attract a large audience, the strip nonetheless increasingly accumulated a modest following as the 1920s continued. At the end of its first decade, the strip resultantly appeared in over a dozen newspapers and had acquired a corresponding Sunday strip (which had debuted on January 25, 1925, within the Hearst-owned New York American paper).


The original cast of "Thimble Theatre" in a 1925 Sunday strip. Left to right: Castor Oyl, Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl
Thimble Theatre's first main characters were the lanky, long-nosed slacker Harold Hamgravy (rapidly shortened to simply "Ham Gravy") and his scrappy, headstrong girlfriend Olive Oyl. In its earliest weeks, the strip featured the duo, alongside a rotating cast of primarily one-shot characters, acting out various stories and scenarios in a parodic theatrical style (hence the strip's name). As its first year progressed, however, numerous elements of this premise would be relinquished (including the recurring character "Willie Wormwood", introduced as a parody of melodrama villainy), soon rendering the strip a series of episodic comic anecdotes depicting the daily life and dysfunctional romantic exploits of Ham Gravy and Olive Oyl. It could be classified as a gag-a-day comic during this period.

In mid-1922, Segar began to increasingly engage in lengthier (often months-long) storylines; by the end of the following year, the strip had effectively changed fully into a comedy-adventure style focusing on Ham, Olive, and Olive's ambitious-but-myopic diminutive brother Castor Oyl, initially a minor character yet arguably the protagonist of the strip by 1925. Castor and Olive's parents Cole and Nana Oyl also made frequent appearances beginning in the mid-1920s. By the late 1920s, the strip had likewise acquired a number of notable characters beyond the sphere of Ham Gravy and the Oyl family, including Castor Oyl's wife Cylinda (to whom he was married from 1926 to 1928), her wealthy, misanthropic father Mr. Lotts and Castor's fighting cockerel Blizzard, all of whom had exited the strip by the close of 1928 (although Cylinda would eventually maritally reunite with Castor under R. K. Milholland's authorship almost a century later).

Mixed media on linen canvas

Without frame

The canvas will be sent rolled in a tube

Certificate of authenticity included

Original canvas

No reproduction

Ready? Steady! Auction...