Sketch of Three Children

This pen sketch by American artist Arnold William Brunner captures three children at play—one seated in a hat, another crawling or tumbling in the center, and a third standing at right. The informal composition and loose line work suggest a quick observational study rather than a finished work. By the 1870s, such character sketches became foundational to the emerging visual language of sequential art. Though predating the newspaper comic strip's explosive growth in the 1890s, drawings like this demonstrate the observational approach to figure and child characterization that would inform the visual grammar—expressive posture, simple forms, and gestural economy—that defined early comics and comic strips.