Man and Dog on Bench

This sketch by Swiss artist Sebastian Buff depicts a seated gentleman with a small dog, rendered in ink on paper with characteristic 19th-century economy of line. Though predating the newspaper comic strip era by decades, such observational drawings of everyday social interaction established visual conventions later adopted by early cartoonists: the profile view for clear characterization, gestural posture conveying personality, and the relationship between human and animal subjects. Buff's work belongs to a tradition of satirical illustration that would directly influence the sequential art and character-driven humor of comic strips emerging in the 1890s, when artists refined these techniques into panels, dialogue, and recurring characters.