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[MarkWarner]

Being a reckless spendthrift fool I blew 9 bucks (including delivery to England) on this hand inked "postcard". It is actually just about a postcard size and not one at all. Description was:

"Small 1947 Pen and Ink Cartoon Illustration by "Bill Hall" Not sure what it is all about, but here it is. Measures about 5 x 3 inches, original art, condition is good, NO creases."

I bought it as I was also unsure what it is about. I guess it's Year End 1947 ... I think that Pete the Pup MAY NOT be the dog from "Our Gang" as he has no circle around the eye and Our Gang finished 3 years before. I cannot find any trace of "Bill Hall". You can vaguely see the pencil marks beneath and it is quite intricately done, so Bill Hall was no slouch and I guess the guy with the cigar is a "real" person. 

Any ideas about who/what/why? And I mean ANY ideas, would be gratefully received!

[SuperScrounge]

Offhand I would guess it's a newspaper editorial cartoon. Most likely about the upcoming year of 1947.

Unfortunately Bill Hall & Pete the Pup are too common for a Google search. Any clues as to a city?

[MarkWarner]

I was presuming that it was the end of 1947. Would an original editorial cartoon be that size? I had not thought of that.
I will contact the seller (who deals in postcards) to ask about region. I guessed that it had just got caught up with other stuff he had, as it was postcard dimensions. Will report back!

[SuperScrounge]

To me the phrase "What're we gonna do with it?" implies something new or upcoming and since he's holding a plate with a year on it it's more likely to be the upcoming year as most people don't care about the year that's ending.

I'm not sure if there was a standard size for editorial cartoons. I'd guess it depends on the newspaper and what size they ran their cartoons at.

A few years ago I was going through the scans at the Fulton Postcard (a site that has fiche scans of old New York newspapers) and was surprised at how small some comics were. For I believe most of it's run Flapper Fanny was the width of one column of text, until it was upgraded to a two-column panel for the last few years of its run.

[MarkWarner]

I thought about what you said and I agree. He's saying where shall we hang this ... not where shall we bin it. And of course it makes more sense to have the New Year date not the old!

As I am a child of the digital age (ahem!) I know nothing about how things were printed back in the day . So stupid question, the size that appeared would be the size that was created? I had assumed it was drawn for amusement, I now think I was wrong! BTW the card has been hand cut so was on a bigger sheet.

[crashryan]

Most of the time original art was prepared twice the printed size. It was easier to draw something big, then reduce it photographically. Not everybody worked twice up, though. Frank Bellamy painted those lovely Thunderbirds spreads printed size, though I don't know how the heck he did it.

[SuperScrounge]

I suppose size would depend on the artist and the reproductive capabilities of the newspaper.

Still even a postcard size drawing could be shrunk down to fit one column of text.

Here's a scan of an old 1925 newspaper and you can see a Flapper Fanny cartoon at one-column size.