Of the thirty-six Peter Arno drawings that appeared in The New Yorker in 1939, one should be noted as entirely different from what the readership had come to expect from his pen. The captionless drawing of October 7th, described in The New Yorker’s records as: “Air Squadron flying over a cemetery in France” is a somber piece unlike anything Arno had ever done before.
The drawing had nothing to do with his specialties: sugar daddies, buxom babes and Cafe Society, but with the very real and current war in Europe. Although Arno’s drawings would re-visit the subject of war in the coming years, his work would never again be so nakedly serious.
(the above excerpted from Mad At Something, my biography of Arno)