Herbert E. Crowley (1873 – 1939)

Rye, 1911

Five Ghouls, 1911-14

Nightmare

Fantastic Animals Left off the Ark, 1911-14

Slander

The Haunt, 1920's

What is Funny? by Herbert Crowley (Toronto Sunday World), January 24, 1915

"The Wiggle Much" Comic Strip, Number 14 (published by The New York Herald, June 14, 1910)

"The Wiggle Much" Comic Strip, Number 11 (published by The New York Herald, May 29, 1910)

"The Wiggle Much" Comic Strip, Number 16 (not published by The New York Herald) 1910

"The Wiggle Much" Comic Strip, No. 1 (published in The New York Herald, March 20, 1910)


"Herbert E. Crowley (1873 – 1939) was a British artist, set designer, and comic strip cartoonist. He is the author of The Wigglemuch, a symbolic comic strip published by the New York Herald. It ran for a total of 13 installments from March to June 1910.

Born in London in 1873, Crowley grew up to become a painter. Even though he studied singing in Paris and became a trained musician, his drawings and cartoons led him to New York, where he lived for around 15 years. His first work after arriving in the US in 1910 was The Wigglemuch (published by the New York Herald), a comic strip that has become his most famous piece. It was also the only collection of comic strip cartoons that he would ever publish. Between 1910 and 1924, many of his paintings and sketches were exhibited in New York, in both collective and individual exhibitions, including the Armory Show in 1913 and frequent artwork displays on 57th Street. He exhibited with Léon Bakst at the Berlin Photographic Company in New York in 1914, where his work was compared to that of William Blake in the exhibition catalog. The New York Times, in an article about the exhibit, remarked, regarding the comparison that "what resemblances may exist between the two artists is strongest in the spiritual quality of their attitude toward their art and a kind of personal symbolism not very clear to the uninitiated."

He married Neighborhood Playhouse founder Alice Lewisohn in 1924, and the two of them became part of the Carl Jung inner circle in Zurich. Crowley was one of the first set designers for the Neighborhood Playhouse, designing sets for The Kairn of Koridwen in 1917. The New York Times mentioned the wedding, held in London in a small item on an obituaries page, identifying Crowley only as "an English artist." The item went on to mention that "... (Alice) told none of her friends of the possibility that she might be married before she returned, but they were not surprised at the news, for she and Mr. Crowley had been close friends for several years."

In the mid-to-late 1920s Crowley returned to London and spent some time traveling. He went to the Middle East and he frequently visited India. Crowley eventually established himself in Zurich, Switzerland, where he would spend the rest of his life. He died in 1939." - quote source


There is currently a kickstarter titled "The Temple of Silence: Forgotten Worlds of Herbert Crowley" with the goal of creating an oversized archival art book of Crowley's work.   

A tumblr devoted to the works of Crowley can be viewed here.

Artworks found thanks to Josh O'Neil and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art