The Latest Addition To The Spill Archives: A 1932 New Yorker Spot Drawing
Above: a close up of the drawing. Below: the entire original.
Below: how it appeared in The New Yorker.
This George Shellhase “Spot” drawing from The New Yorker issue of October 1, 1932 has been on my mind since it was first listed many many months ago on Ebay (the seller finally let the piece go for about the price of a tankful of regular gas (in New York, not California).
As with so many Spot drawings, it’s surprising how complex they often are when you stop and take a closer look at them. The lines of Shellhase’s beautifully drawn car remind me of Peter Arno’s “Albatross” — the car he designed and had produced*; the seemingly patient woman driver still behind the wheel has just a hint of Eustace Tilley in her profile; there’s an elegance in the sway and turn of the mechanic’s body. I’ve always found cars on lifts fascinating. We finally get to see some of the “stuff” usually hidden from our eyes — the things only the pavement sees (not in this drawing though)…and, bear with me here: cars looks helpless on lifts, sort of like turtles that’ve somehow been turned upside down.
One other element caught my eye when I first saw this drawing: the “R” on the upper right in the area surrounding the drawing. The “R” was written by Harold Ross, The New Yorker‘s founder and first editor. It was his way of indicating a piece of art was green lighted (i.e.,bought).
George Shellhase contributed eighteen cartoons to The New Yorker in his thirteen years at the magazine, but I’ve no idea how many “Spot” drawings he contributed (there’s no official, or unofficial, accounting of New Yorker Spot drawings, and Spot artists). The Spill recently ran this piece about a few of his books.
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George Shellhase ( Self portrait above. Source: Best Cartoons of the Year 1943; Photo: Newsclipping January 1969) Born, Philadelphia, 1895; Lived for many years in Greenwich, Connecticut. Died, age 93, in a nursing home, Ocean Ridge, Florida, December 1988. New Yorker work: 1927 – 1940. His New York Times (Dec. 16, 1988) obit reads, in part: Shellhase “briefly attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and The Art Students League in New York. His affectionate and gently comic illustrations of American life appeared in publications like The Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, The New Yorker and The New York Times.”
*an ad for Peter Arno’s Albatross. As far as I know, only one was produced. According to Arno’s daughter, that’s Arno himself behind the wheel.
