Word has reached Ink Spill that a biography of the prolific New Yorker cartoonist (and cover artist) Barbara Shermund is in the works. Shermund’s great niece, Amanda Gormley is in the early stages of research on the artist’s life and work. Ms. Gormley writes that her “goal is to bring her story to light and marry her early life and works in San Francisco to her life and love for New York.” Anyone wishing to contribute information on Barbara Shermund may contact Ms. Gormley through her email address: amanda.janes@att.net
Here’s Ink Spill’s “New Yorker Cartoonists A – Z” listing:
Barbara Shermund Born, San Francisco. 1899. Studied at The California School of Fine Arts. Died, 1978, New Jersey. New Yorker work: June 13, 1925 thru September 16, 1944. 8 covers and 599 cartoons. Shermund’s later. post-New Yorker work was featured in Esquire. (See Liza Donnelly’s book, Funny Ladies — a history of The New Yorker’s women cartoonists — for more on Shermund’s life and work)
Shermund’s self portrait above from Colliers Collects Its Wits (Harcourt Brace and Company, NY. 1940, 1941)