It’s a rare breed now, but once upon a time New Yorker cartoonists who contributed covers to the magazine were the norm. Rea Irvin, who everyone associates with the magazine’s mascot, Eustace Tilley, was the first cross-over New Yorker cover artist/cartoonist. Inotherwords, he did both covers and cartoons. Al Frueh was the first to accomplish both: his was the magazine’s second cover and his cartoons appeared twice in the first issue. ( Rea Irvin’s first cartoon didn’t appear until the issue of June 6th, 1925). An even rarer subset of contributors includes the handful who’ve contributed covers, cartoons and written pieces ( Peter Arno, James Thurber, James Stevenson, Lou Myers, Lee Lorenz, Bob Mankoff and Roz Chast come readily to mind).
Up until 1992, when Tina Brown became editor the greater per centage of the year’s covers were executed by cartoonists. When Ms. Brown divided the Art Editor’s position in two, with a Cartoon Editor responsible for cartoons and an Art Editor responsible for covers, the majority of covers began to be executed by illustrators, graphic artists and in some cases, fine artists, such as Red Grooms, and more recently, Wayne Thiebaud.
Here’s a list of cartoonists who’ve contributed to both the outside and inside of the magazine (contemporary cartoonists who’ve continued to cross-over in the most recent years are high-lighted in blue):
Charles Addams
Peter Arno
Niculae Asciu
Perry Barlow
Charles Barsotti
Ralph Barton
Ludwig Bemelmans
Abe Birnbaum
R.O. Blechman
Harry Bliss
George Booth
CEM (Charles E. Martin)
Roz Chast
Whitney Darrow, Jr.
Robert Day
James Daugherty (aka Jimmy-the-Ink)
Abner Dean
Richard Decker
Leonard Dove
Alan Dunn
Joseph Farris
Douglas Florian
Al Frueh
Arthur Getz
Alice Harvey
Helen Hokinson
Stan Hunt
Rea Irvin
Bruce Eric Kaplan
Edward Koren
Anatole Kovarsky
Robert Kraus
Arnie Levin
Lee Lorenz
Kenneth Mahood
Robert Mankoff
Reginald Marsh
Warren Miller
Frank Modell
Lou Myers
John O’Brien
Mary Petty
Garrett Price
George Price
Gardner Rea
Donald Reilly
Mischa Richter
Victoria Roberts
Carl Rose
Charles Saxon
Ronald Searle
J.J. Sempe
Danny Shanahan
Barbara Shermund
Stephanie Skalisky
Edward Sorel
William Steig
Saul Steinberg
James Stevenson
Anthony Taber
Richard Taylor
JamesThurber
Barney Tobey
Dean Vietor
Robert Weber
Gahan Wilson
Jack Ziegler
Nice piece, I had no idea that the covers job was split by Tina Brown.
Perhaps it was serendipitously timely, as there are many more people who might have become cartoonists in the past, becoming comic artists, illustrators, or “graphic novelists” today, as the age-old magazine cartoon markets diminish. There is, therefore, a much wider pool of talent that could have gone untapped if the cover jobs had been largely left only to New Yorker cartoonists; and illustrators like Seth, Adrian Tomine, Daniel Clowes, and other “underground” but now mainstream illustrators would have remained unfamiliar to many New Yorker readers. That championing of underground cartoonists/illustrators is, of course, due largely to the efforts of Françoise Mouly.