Illustration of Interest…Peter Arno By Fernando Autori
The above illustration appears in the November 30, 1932 Tatler. I wasn’t at all familiar with the drawing or the illustrator, Fernando Autori until I spotted the listing this morning on Ebay.
Turns out Mr. Autori was known as much for his singing as for his illustration.
The Arno illustration mentions The Leicester Galleries exhibit in London. Pardon these few words from my Arno biography:
In the Fall of 1932, the Arno exhibit, titled Works, was acclaimed by the London critics; news of the show’s success quickly spread across the Atlantic. Time, calling Arno “slick and sexy,” said that, “for an artist, a show at the Leicester was like making a good club.”
Here’s a photo of Arno at the gallery.
And here’s what TIME Magazine had to say about Arno and the exhibit:
In London, smart art is shown in the Leicester Galleries. During the season its walls burgeon with the works of socialite portraitists, sporting artists, caricaturists, sculptors. For an artist, a show at the Leicester is like making a good club. Last week the Leicester Galleries gave the first British showing of the wash drawings of Curtis Arnoux Peters, the New Yorker’s slick, sexy “Peter Arno.” The show was reviewed by that stuffiest of papers, the ultra-conservative Morning Post which promptly compared Arno’s work to the line drawings in Punch. All honors went to Artist Arno. Wrote the Post in its best pontifical manner:
“Our draughtsmen in the main draw from models, not from life, whereas Mr. Arno, with television penetration visualizes his types while they are unconscious of his existence and presents them with a cinematic spontaneity and forceful pen and brush that in their presence we believe in their actuality.”
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Here’s a closeup, via Attempted Bloggery, of one of the pieces exhibited at the Leicester Galleries.
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Peter Arno’s A-Z Entry
Peter Arno Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr., January 8, 1904, New York City. Died February 22, 1968, Port Chester, NY. New Yorker work: 1925 -1968. Key collection: Ladies & Gentlemen (Simon & Schuster, 1951) The Foreword is by Arno. For far more on Arno please check out my biography of him, Peter Arno: The Mad Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist (Regan Arts, 2016).