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    The Laughing Brush of Stuart Hay

    One of the most wonderful cartoonist-illustrators that you have never heard of is Stuart Hay, referred to by Ernest Watson in his 1946 book, Forty Illustrators and How They Work, as the “Artist of the laughing brush”.  By the 1930s and 40s, Hay did indeed employ a brush line filled with a great deal of joie de vivre, but it took him years, and some interesting changes of direction, to get to that brush filled with laughter.  Stuart Hay was born in Sewickly, Pennsylvania in 1889 and studied art at the Cleveland School of Art, the Art Students League of New York, and the National Academy of Design.  Additionally, Hay…