THE BEAR MUSEUM

The Berenstains Before the Bears

This is the beginning of a regular series of features at the Bear Museum which will focus on the early career of Stan and Jan, before they created the Bear family in 1962. These works are part of a traveling exhibition, Child’s Play on the Crabgrass Frontier, organized by The Strong Museum of Play. Accompanying the exhibition is a lavishly illustrated book, Child's Play: The Berenstain Baby Boom, 1946-1964: Cartoon Art by Stan and Jan Berenstain

Janice Grant and Stanley Berenstain, both born in 1923, met on their first day at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art and have been virtually inseparable ever since. In an unusual move they decided to work as a team, sublimating their individual egos into a signature that simply read “the Berenstains.” They began their careers in the era of illustrated magazines, and soon found success drawing gag cartoons. In a short time, they were cover artists for the country’s leading magazines. Simultaneously they authored a highly successful series of humor books that shared a common theme: family.

After World War II illustration was big business. Magazines and newspapers prospered and ushered in the last period of the Golden Age of Illustration in America. In the era before television, periodicals provided national leisure time activity. Stan and Jan lived a trolley ride away from the apex of the industry. Curtis Publishing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the home of legendary Saturday Evening Post. Stan and Jan worked together as gag cartoonists, building on the success that Stan had achieved at the end of the war. Although their early days were the hardest, their unique status as a husband and wife team helped them become two of the most successful cartoonists of the period.

Caption: "You said to make friends."

See other exhibitions in the Bear Museum: