The word cartoon started as heavy paper for frescoes, then became a joke
For centuries a cartoon was a full-size design drawn on sturdy pasteboard, used to guide painters of frescoes and weavers of tapestries. The funny meaning arrived in 1843, when Punch magazine borrowed the term to mock preparatory drawings for grand frescoes planned inside London's newly built Palace of Westminster.
The name comes from Italian cartone and Dutch karton, words for thick card. Fresco painters worked on damp plaster section by section over several days, so a cartoon kept the composition aligned. Its outlines were often pricked with tiny holes, and patting a bag of soot over the sheet, a technique called pouncing, left dotted guidelines on the wall. Tapestry weavers placed coloured versions behind the loom, sometimes using a mirror to see their work from the reverse. Designs by Raphael, Leonardo and Goya are now treasured as artworks themselves.
The Punch jokes were drawn largely by John Leech, and the label stuck to satirical drawings generally. John Tenniel, who illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, joined the magazine in 1850 and produced over two thousand cartoons across half a century. Political satire had older roots: William Hogarth paved the way, George Townshend drew openly political caricatures in the 1750s, and James Gillray, sometimes called the father of the form, lampooned George III as a pompous fool and ridiculed Napoleon.
Cartoons could wound. In New York, Thomas Nast drew 160 attacks on the corrupt Tweed political machine and helped topple it; Boss Tweed was reportedly arrested in Spain after police recognised him from those drawings. Targets rarely fought back in court. Britain saw no successful lawsuit against a cartoonist for over a century until 1921, when rail union leader J. H. Thomas won a libel case against the British Communist Party's magazine over its depiction of him.
Comic strips grew from humorous beginnings, including the Swiss Mr. Vieux Bois in 1837 and the American Yellow Kid in 1895. DC Thomson launched The Dandy in December 1937 and The Beano the next year. Because early animated films resembled printed strips, the word eventually attached itself to animation too.
Source: Cartoon
