A Couple Of Hamilton Roughs
I believe I’m on record somewhere (here maybe?) saying how much I enjoy cartoonists’s rough drawings almost as much as their finished work. And so it was lots of fun “winning” two William Hamilton pieces a week ago on Ebay (up until then, the Spill collection had zero Hamilton originals).
Although these drawings have some captions written on them, I was unable to match Hamilton’s captions on The New Yorker‘s database. It’s possible the drawings exist with completely different captions; it’s also possible they were never published in the magazine. I looked through Hamilton’s collections and did not find any similar drawings (I did notice, however, that he did a whole lot of drawings of people talking to each other in kitchens). With close to a thousand New Yorker cartoons to his name, it would be a massive undertaking to look through all of his work, hoping for a visual match. Unusual for “roughs” — if that’s what they are — Hamilton signed each one. It’s possible he considered each piece as finished.
I had several interactions with Bill over the years, both in The New Yorker’s offices (which he frequented way more than me), and outside the office (we chatted on the day of the Arnold Newman group cartoonists photo shoot). We had a few email exchanges along the way, especially during the period I was researching my Peter Arno biography (Hamilton, like Arno, went to Yale). As with many cartoonists, there seemed much of him in his work, and much of his work in him.
Below: a “bonus” drawing on the reverse of one of the pieces:
___________________________________________________
William Hamilton’s A-Z Entry:
William Hamilton (Born 1939, Palo Alto, Ca. Died, Lexington, Kentucky, April 8, 2016. NYer work: April 3, 1965 – March 25, 2013. Collections of his work include: The Antisocial Register (1974), Terribly Nice People (1975), Money Should Be Fun (1979) and The Men Will Fear You, and the Women Will Adore You (1986).
Below, a selection of his cartoon collections (see the Spill’s Cartoonist Library for pub dates and publishers)
_____________________________________________________________________________
A Big Date
Today, the twenty-first of February, is also the date on the cover of the very first issue of Harold Ross’s New Yorker, on newsstands ninety-nine years ago this week.
The cover artist: Rea Irvin.
Rea Irvin (pictured above. Self portrait above from Meet the Artist) *Born, San Francisco, 1881; died in the Virgin Islands,1972. Irvin was the cover artist for the New Yorker’s first issue, February 21, 1925. He was the magazine’s first art and only art supervisor (some refer to him as its first art editor) holding the position from 1925 until 1939 when James Geraghty assumed the title of art editor. Irvin then became art director and remained in that position until William Shawn officially succeeded Harold Ross in early 1952. Irvin’s last original work for the magazine was the magazine’s cover of July 12, 1958. The February 21, 1925 Eustace Tilley cover had been reproduced every year on the magazine’s anniversary until 1994, when R. Crumb’s Tilley-inspired cover appeared. Tilley has since reappeared, with other artists substituting from time-to-time. Number of New Yorker covers (not including the repeat appearances of the first cover every anniversary up to 1991): 163. Number of cartoons contributed: 261.