BEHIND THE INK

Bob Englehart (born November 7, 1945, in Fort Wayne, Indiana) is the first full-time editorial cartoonist for America’s oldest continuously published newspaper, The Hartford Courant.  He joined the paper in 1980.

Biography After attending Chicago’s American Academy of Art, Bob drew art and illustrations for the Chicago Today.  In 1972, while working as an independent commercial artist, he began his editorial cartoon career by drawing freelance for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.  His first full-time position came in 1975 at the Dayton Journal Herald and, four years later, was the Pulitzer Prize finalist in the Editorial Cartoon category.  Today, his work appears 5 days a week on the Courant’s editorial page and, along with his blog, on their website at http://www.courant.com.  He is syndicated world- wide by Caglecartoons.com.

Englehart is the author of two collections of his editorial cartoons and a memoir, Trackrat: Memoir of a Fan and continues to be reprinted in books, textbooks, and periodicals.  His editorial cartoons are included in the permanent collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at Ohio State University, the Newseum in Washington, D. C., Eastern Connecticut State University, the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University Of Connecticut and Indiana-Purdue University of Fort Wayne.  His work has been the subject of many major solo exhibits most recently at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford.

Television and Live Performances:

Bob regularly speaks to civic groups and school children of all ages.  In July of 1992, during the Democratic Convention in New York, Bob drew for live audiences at Caroline’s Comedy Club on Broadway in “Raucous Caucus,” a political comedy review.  In 1988 Bob and his wife, Pat McGrath, created a humorous weekly segment for Connecticut Public Television for which they won two New England Emmys in Boston.  From 1992 to 1996 they created a one-minute sports cartoon commentary segment for ESPN’s Sunday morning programming and drew sports caricatures for ESPN’s NFL Prime Monday show. Bob's video segment "Facetime With Bob Englehart" ran for two years on FoxCT WTIC-TV.