When The Star closed in 1981, Mr. Oliphant was so well established with syndication sales that he had no need of a newspaper base. He rejected offers from other papers and became the first major independent cartoonist without a home newspaper. He now had total editorial control, the freedom to draw what he wanted and work where he chose.
By 1983, he was the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in America. He later cut back from five to four cartoons a week, and in 1997 he began shifting his home and studio from Washington to Santa Fe, N.M., a move completed in 2004.
While he had long painted oil portraits, Mr. Oliphant in the 1980s branched out into other fine arts, creating lithographs, etchings and bronze sculptures of presidents and other national leaders, which were sometimes sold to their subjects.
The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington mounted a show in 1990, “Oliphant’s Presidents: 25 years of Caricature.” In the 1990 Times Magazine profile, Alan Fern, the gallery’s director, gave this assessment: “I think he’s a genius. His drawing is the most eloquent and least labored of any I’ve ever seen.”
Mr. Oliphant’s papers, including 7,000 cartoon drawings, were donated to the University of Virginia. His work was also collected in 25 books and in the Library of Congress, various presidential libraries, the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other museums.
In 1958, he married Hendrika de Vries, a Dutch-born swimming champion. They had a son, Grant, and two daughters, Laura and Susanne, before divorcing. His marriage to Mary Ann Kuhn in 1983 also ended in divorce. In 1996, he married Susan C. Conway, a Washington gallery owner who was his business manager. She had two children, Pauline and Daniel Conway, by a previous marriage. (She died in December 2025.)
