James Swinnerton has become known as the “the Dean of California Desert School.” As a young man from Northern California, he found city life invigorating. He was a successful newspaper artist in San Francisco and moved on to New York City. He worked for William Randolph Hearst and among his other credits, was one of the very first cartoon strip artists. He was highly successful in New York financially and socially. But then, Jimmy came down with tuberculosis.

Doctors gave James only two weeks to live! William Randolph Hearst immediately put him on a train and sent him to dry climate of the California Desert. To James, the landscape at first glance must have appeared to be desolate , but the dry climate soon revived him. He recovered from tuberculosis and rebuild his vitality. The more he lived in the desert and got to know his surroundings, he began painting what he saw. Many of his paintings show thriving life in the desert, the same life which revived him.

As an art student in his teen years at the San Francisco School of Design, James studied under William Keith and Emil Carlsen along with classmate Maynard Dixon.

William Randolph Hearst noticed the talent of Swinnerton and his classmate, Maynard Dixon. Hearst brought Swinnerton to New York to work for his newspaper syndicate.

He penned two comic strips, "Little Jimmy," and "Little Tiger." But, in 1903 at age twenty-eight, he contracted tuberculosis, and for health reasons relocated to California, this time to the desert community of Colton, just outside San Bernadino.

From 1903 onward, Jimmy became known as a painter of the desert.

At first, his renditions were not accepted. Critics expected the vast wastelands of the Sahara, but Swinnerton persisted, showing the beauty and tenacious life of the desert.

He explored the Southwest throughout New Mexico, Arizona (nine years before it became the 48th state), Utah, and California. His favored subjects included the Grand Canyon and portraits of American Indians. He even had a comic strip of Indian children called "Canyon Kiddies" which was published in Good Housekeeping Magazine.

Decades after Swinnerton, Jimmy drew "Little Jimmy" and the "Canyon Kiddies," these newspaper cartoon strips were made into animated cartoons. In 1936, "Little Jimmy" was a guest star in Max Fleischer's "Betty Boop." In the 1940's, Warner Brothers Looney Toons featured the "Canyon Kiddies" in an animated cartoon entitled Mighty Hunters. Swinnerton's provided paintings of the Grand Canyon which were used for the backdrops. View our article in Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery Monthly, March, 2009, and you may find out more. At the time of the article, "YouTube" offered complete versions of both of these cartoons, but since they've been removed.