The Artistic Contribution: A Finish and A Cooler

I don't know if you've noticed, but back in the 1890s to the early 1900s before photographs began to widely replace hand-drawn illustrations, newspaper drawings followed a clear progressive path, from quite bad, little-more-than-stick-figures, to full-figured artistic caricatures. I assume, that as newspapers began to use illustrations as accessories to their written stories (and sometimes in place of them) editors and publishers found it in their interest to hire illustrators with some training and talent. The two illustrations shown below, from the Los Angeles Times, document incidents during the 4th of July Los Angeles to Santa Monica Road Race of 1902, the final edition of the once prestigious event.

The identity of the disgruntled rider approaching the finish carrying his bent and broken bicycle, in the first, has been lost to time. The second, however, clearly represents an incident that was documented in the written race recap. It seems that former Los Angeles racing stand-out, Fritz Lacey, had set himself up in front of a house about two miles out from Santa Monica. There, with a supply of water, and buckets to collect it in, Lacey awaited the riders speeding in toward the finish. As they approached his spot on the road, they received both a drenching and an accompanying collection of words of encouragement to help them put in a strong finish.