Winsor McCay: HIS LIFE AND ART by John Canemaker (Abbeville: $49.95; 224 pp, illustrated)

Although his name remains unfamiliar to the general public, Winsor McCay (1867-1934) was a key figure in the history of the graphic arts in America. He helped to create both the animated film and the newspaper comic strip, and was a highly respected editorial cartoonist.

Working from previously undiscovered sources, including letters and diaries, John Canemaker (who organized retrospectives of McCay’s films for MOMA and the Whitney Museum) has assembled a scholarly yet readable book, the first biography of this brilliant, under-appreciated artist.

McCay displayed an early aptitude for drawing, and even his earliest published works--reproduced here for the first time--reveal his extraordinary ability to render objects in perspective. One of the first artists to explore the newly invented medium of the newspaper comic strip, he created “Tales of the Jungle Imps,” “Hungry Henrietta,” “Little Sammy Sneeze” and the wonderful, hallucinatory “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend” (a series of bizarre nightmares supposedly induced by eating Welsh rarebit) before he was 30.

In 1905, McCay unveiled his masterpiece in the New York Herald: “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” the most beautiful of all comic strips. Only George Herriman’s “Krazy Kat” rivals “Little Nemo” in sustained visual imagination. In contrast to the simple, idiosyncratic drawings of Herriman’s Coconino County, McCay’s Slumberland offered opulent vistas of baroque architecture, fantastic monsters and carefully observed animals and humans, all rendered in a heavy, sensual art nouveau line.

McCay used the characters from the comic strip in his first animated film, “Little Nemo” (1911). He showed “Nemo” and two subsequent films, “How a Mosquito Operates” (1912) and “Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914), in his popular “lightning sketch” vaudeville act. “Nemo,” and, especially, “Gertie” were seminal works in the history of animation that continue to influence artists more than 70 years later.

Although McCay did not invent animated film making, as he sometimes claimed, he did establish the bases of character animation. The pioneer animators who preceded him showed simple figures performing elementary movements and metamorphoses in their films. McCay animated fully rendered characters in three-dimensional space, gave them a feeling of weight and solidity, and imbued them with the first suggestions of personality. The elegance and sophistication of his animation was completely without precedent. Nearly 20 years would elapse before the artists at the Walt Disney studio surpassed his achievements.

Canemaker contrasts the joyous fantasies of McCay’s work with his often unhappy life. Relations with his wife were frequently so strained that McCay would move from the family home to a hotel. His stern father never seems to have approved of his artistic vocation, despite his fame and financial success.

Professionally, McCay suffered further disappointments. He believed animation was a new art form, and was appalled by the unimaginative, formulaic work turned out by the early cartoon studios. Although William Randolph Hearst paid McCay well, he forced the artist to give up his vaudeville act and comic strips, and insisted he devote his time to illustrating the reactionary editorials in the New York American. McCay’s political cartoons display his masterful draftsmanship, but they lack the inspiration and zest of the earlier comics and films.

Among the numerous illustrations, Canemaker has included many family photographs--perhaps too many. Most readers would rather see another “Little Nemo” panel than another picture of McCay’s wife. The book supplements the previous anthologies of McCay’s work (four collections of “Little Nemo” and one of the “Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend” are currently in print).

By the time McCay died in 1934, his pioneering work had been forgotten. Newspaper readers followed a new generation of comics; Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse have supplanted his animated characters. His films narrowly escaped destruction when the nitrate stock deteriorated, and three survive only in fragments.

Screenings of McCay’s animation at Expo ’67 began a groundswell of interest in the artist and his work, which has culminated in this biography. “Winsor McCay: His Life and Art” is a long overdue tribute to one of the greatest artists in the history of animation, the comic strip--and American popular culture.