Antique Cynicus, Martin Anderson 'His Latest Purchase' Framed Hand Coloured Lithograph Print

Very rare !

Martin Anderson was a Scottish artist who produced artwork and postcards, some of which were in support of the women's suffrage movement. The particular example relates to the Married Women's Property Act, of 1882

Original oak frame

Dated around 1890.

Good used condition for age, with some staining, soiling and foxing.

28cm x 34.5cm approx, frame

Printers stamp 'Manufactured Copyright' plus facsimile 'Cynicus' signature. 

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.

A satiric Christmas poem by "Cynicus" published in The Idler magazine, December 1892When 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.

In 1891 he moved back to London in an attempt to get his work noticed, taking a shop in Drury Lane, with the sign "Cynicus Publishing Company" over its door and with prints of his cartoons displayed in its windows. The Satires of Cynicus began to attract public attention and increasing sales. The edition was limited to 1000 copies, and by the end of 1891 it was almost out of print.

In 1891 he began contributing work to the "Pall Mall Budget", as well as to The Idler and "Ariel or the London Puck", yet another rival to Punch. [4]

A second book, titled "The Humours of Cynicus", again containing many reworked The Quiz cartoons, was partwork published starting in September 1891. The complete 1000-copy edition of the complete volume sold for 25 shillings, with a 100-edition deluxe version priced at 2 guineas. In 1892 he began work on another collection, "Symbols and Metaphors". It was also issued in parts, like its predecessors. [5] A cheaper edition of The Satires of Cynicus was published in June 1892, and there were also later reprints of it.

Cynicus Publishing Company postcard posted in 1908In the late 1890s a new market for his products was quickly emerging – that of picture postcards. In 1898 Anderson began working for Blum & Degan where he designed court-sized postcards. In 1902, after the Post Office allowed divided back postcards, picture postcards became very popular and also began to be widely collected.

In 1902 Anderson decided to form his own company. The "Cynicus Publishing Company" was incorporated as a limited company and began publishing colour postcards by the second half of 1902. Initially, the company did exceedingly well. However, by 1908 the mass-market popularity of postcards began to decline and the company suffered from dwindling profitability. In 1911 the North of Scotland Bank forced the company to liquidate its assets. Its stocks of prints and original artwork were sold by the bank for a fraction of their true value and without any thought for their proper market: they were sold in a second-hand furniture salesroom rather than to art dealers in Edinburgh and London.

In 1912, after the collapse of the Cynicus Publishing Company, Anderson set up the "Cynicus Art Publishing Company" based in Leeds (the home of several postcard publishers), and began reissuing his old postcards and designing new ones. About 100 different postcards are known to have been printed by the Leeds company until 1914.