To most Islanders, the name Denys Wortman is most familiar as that of the former Tisbury selectman. But before that Wortman, there was another Denys Wortman, the painter-turned-cartoonist whose work could be found six days a week for more than 30 years in the pages of New York’s World-Telegram and Sun (and syndicated widely in other papers). More than 50 years after his father’s death, the efforts of his son over many years and then a lucky discovery by James Sturm, the director of the Center for Cartoon Studies, in White River Junction, Vt., have resulted in a major New York museum show, feature articles in print and online, and the publication of Denys Wortman’s New York, a collection of the artist’s work.

Mr. Wortman, born in 1887, had studied and worked as a painter in New York alongside such 20th century luminaries as John Sloan, Edward Hopper and George Bellows; he even exhibited a painting in the famed Armory Show of 1913. But then his love of cartooning took him down a different artistic road.

Denys Wortman’s cartoons were not at all of the Blondie or Dick Tracy world; rather, they were observational, depicting urban life in New York across a whole range of social classes. Richly detailed in their drawing, and in the conversations that formed their captions, they have much in common with the photographs of such greats as Berenice Abbott and Walker Evans — not surprising since Wortman’s wife, Hilda, took hundreds of pictures of street life for her husband’s visual reference, and also recorded the real-life dialogue that was the basis for many of the cartoons. In fact, the overall title for Denys Wortman’s daily cartoon was Metropolitan Movies. Much of his work came during the years of the Great Depression, World War II and the postwar era and reflects his strong sense of social justice. Women from all social strata found their lives depicted in his cartoons, which was a rarity at the time. A number of Hilda Wortman’s photographs are also in the exhibition.

The Wortman family came to the Vineyard in 1941, after Denys Sr. suffered a heart attack and his doctor had urged a less stressful environment. Life may have in fact been easier here, but another heart attack, this one fatal, ended Mr. Wortman’s life in 1958. Their home on Hines Point is where Denys Wortman, the son, still lives and where he has archived thousands of his father’s drawings, paintings, and much of his correspondence. Since 1998, he has built and maintained the Web site, dwortman.com. And that’s where James Sturm comes in.

Mr. Sturm, the cartoon center director, and also a graphic novelist, who had never previously heard of Denys Wortman or seen his work, came across an old book of drawings which led him to both the Wortman Web site and to the son’s archive on the Vineyard. What James Sturm discovered when he visited the Wortman home and spoke with the younger Mr. Wortman was exciting for him. It also was exactly what Denny Wortman, son, had been hoping for and working toward for a long, long time.

And now, at the Museum of the City of New York, on Fifth avenue, you can see the exhibition Denys Wortman Rediscovered: Drawings for the World-Telegram and Sun, which runs through March 20. At a symposium before the opening of the museum’s show, Mr. Sturm said he was “blown away” and surprised to have “never heard of someone so accomplished and prolific.” The museum’s director calls Wortman “one of the great chroniclers of the unique urban experience.” At the same time, Jules Feiffer, saying “there was nothing quite like it,” remembered seeing the drawings as a boy and thinking it was like “looking out the window — or my window in the Bronx.”

In 1953, the artist Guy Pène du Bois wrote: “Denys Wortman’s work should be treated as seriously in America as that of men like Daumier in France [and] Hogarth in England.” Decades may have passed since that was written, but the sentiment remains true. Already, other institutions have been in touch with Denny Wortman Jr., and there will likely be additional exhibitions and publications.

Denys Wortman’s New York: Portrait of the City in the 30s and 40s, published by Drawn and Quarterly, is available at Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.

More information about the exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York is at mcny.org.

Denny Wortman’s Web site is dwortman.com.