The Monday Tilley Watch Takes A Glancing Look At The Art & Artists Of The Latest Issue Of The New Yorker
The Cover: lotsa birds, even more flora.
The Cartoonists & Cartoons:
Eighteen cartoons, nineteen cartoonists (Ed Steed has the cover). One duo (that we know of), and no newbies.
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The Rea Irvin Talk Watch
The above iconic design by the late great Rea Irvin was discarded in the Spring of 2017 for a –gasp! — redrawn version. The Spill continues to hope (against hope?) that the above will one day be returned to the New Yorker. In the meantime, you can read more about it here.
Rea Irvin’s entry on the Spill’s A-Z:
Rea Irvin (pictured above. Self portrait 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.
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A Mystery Cartoonist!
When you visit the Spill‘s A-Z section the first thing you see is this disclaimer:
What follows is a work in progress — it isn’t a complete list of The New Yorker’s cartoonists, and probably never will be. A complete list is likely impossible as The New Yorker itself has not been able to identify a number of early contributors.
Well here’s one of those early unidentified contributors, discovered last night while browsing through vintage issues of The New Yorker. This drawing appears in the issue of November 21, 1931.
What caught my attention wasn’t the style: it isn’t unusual for the time (I won’t comment on the content). What caught my attention was the signature (shown at the top of this piece) — I’d never seen it before. I searched The Complete New Yorker database hoping there’d be an ID, but no luck.
If anyone out there recognizes the artist, please let me know.