Olive Realises She Fancies Popeye - Limited Edition Print (Signed)

Print. New. Popeye artist. Screenprint by Popeye artist on Cotton Paper. SIGNED NUMBERED PRINT. Size: 7" x 10" (190mm x 260mm). Popeye and Olive Oyl are an archetypal couple – they are obviously attracted to each other, but they often fall out and row, often bitterly. Although the characters have been around for nearly 100 years, the way they behave seems quite modern. Popeye was originally a minor character in a strip syndicated in American newspapers called Thimble Theatre, which started in 1919, with Olive Oyl and her brother Caster Oyl some of the main characters. Popeye first appeared as an incidental character in 1929 and stole the show; the strip was soon named after him. By the way, it was only when I started screenprinting the character that I realised that his name refers to the fact that he only has a single eye, the left one. The right eye is always depicted as a sort of asterisk. Apparently, when Elzie Segar introduced Popeye, he drew his inspiration from a man he knew in his hometown of Chester, Illinois, who was a one-eyed man called Frank "Rocky" Fiegal. And spinach – which became an essential part of the Popeye makeup – was not originally part of his setup. The iron-rich leaf first made an appearance in the early 1930s, when he was running away from a bull and accidentally landed in a back garden full of the stuff. He didn't even know what it was, and had to be told. This is a handmade original screenprint: a work of art printed by hand, from a plate, block, stone, or stencil (which is the case here - screenprints are made using screen stencils) that has been created by the artist for the purpose of producing the image. Signed and numbered out of 200 in pencil by the printer, John Patrick Reynolds.