If you read The New Yorker you are very familiar with at least one of his covers: his first one. Mention The New Yorker and one of the images that comes to mind for most people is Eustace Tilley, the top-hatted gentleman who appeared on the magazine’s inaugural cover in 1925 and returned thereafter, mid-February, for sixty-eight straight years, to mark each of the magazine’s anniversaries (for more on what happened next with and to Tilley, you can link here to “Tilley Over Time” a newyorker.com piece of mine that appeared in 2008).
That first cover was by Rea Irvin, who was hired by The New Yorker’s founder and first editor, Harold Ross, when Ross began cobbling together his urban magazine with little appeal to the little old lady in Dubuque. Irvin’s duties – he was taken on as art consultant – are chronicled in Genius in Disguise, Thomas Kunkel’s wonderful biography of Harold Ross, as well as in The Art of The New Yorker by Lee Lorenz. There is universal agreement among The New Yorker’s writers and artists that Irvin’s part in shaping the magazine’s art was invaluable.
Beyond his role as consultant, Irvin was a prolific cover artist and cartoonist, contributing nearly two hundred covers and a bit over 250 cartoons to the magazine. If you happen to have The Complete Book of Covers from The New Yorker (Knopf, 1989) you have the luxury of paging through the years and locating each and every Irvin cover — not at all difficult once you’re accustomed to his style.
It has been noted in numerous places, including Irvin’s New York Times obit (May 29, 1972) that once Harold Ross passed away in December of 1951, Irvin “feuded” with the magazine. Lee Lorenz, among others, has written that when William Shawn officially succeeded Ross in January of 1952, one of the first things Shawn did was encourage Irvin to retire (Shawn also undid Ross’s famous roomful of editors going over the week’s art. Under Shawn, the art meeting became a duet: Shawn plus James Geraghty, and later, once Geraghty retired, Shawn plus Lorenz). I suppose something could be made of the fact that the end of Irvin’s cartoon contributions coincides with the year of Ross’s death, but it’s not all that tidy a coincidence (the last Irvin cartoon was published February 10, 1951; Harold Ross died December 6, 1951). Irvin’s covers, however, continued on for another six years. From 1952 (the beginning of the Shawn era) through 1958 (when Irvin’s last New Yorker cover appeared) there were five — a remarkable drop considering he had 20 covers in the last six years of Ross’s editorship.
Irvin’s final non-Eustace Tilley New Yorker cover appeared midway through the sleepy summer month of July, sandwiched between a July 4th cover by Abe Birnbaum and a beautiful Ilonka Karasz cover of tourists in a cathedral. The image, of a golfer and his caddy searching for a lost ball, was another New Yorker cover “moment” – one of so many great moments Irvin gave us over the years.
See more of Irvin’s art at
The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Bank