Attempted Bloggery On A Recent Auction Of Thurber Dogs
A Spill favorite site, Attempted Bloggery has taken a long look at a recent auction of two framed Thurber dog drawings (and related materials). I was keeping tabs on this auction (as I do on any auction that has Thurber drawings) and was hoping there might be a slim chance of winning these, but the bidding was out of my comfort zone well before — maybe a day or two before — the auction ended, so I became an interested bystander. I do love the above piece (it’s not clear where, or if it was published*). The other piece, which you’ll see once you link here to Attempted Bloggery is somewhat unusual, Thurber dog-wise. I was surprised to see Thurber take a crack at what I believe is called a cabinet view (someone please correct me if I’m off on that).
*Sara Thurber Sauers has written in (see the “Comments”) saying that the above mentioned auctioned drawings appear in Thurber’s The Beast In Me (And Other Animals).
Interestingly enough, another original from that book (another dog!) was auctioned not too long ago. One wonders (I wonder): will there be more Beast In Me originals at auction?
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James Thurber A-Z Entry:
James Thurber Born, Columbus, Ohio, December 8, 1894. Died 1961, New York City. New Yorker work: 1927 -1961, with several pieces run posthumously. According to the New Yorker’s legendary editor, William Shawn, “In the early days, a small company of writers, artists, and editors — E.B. White, James Thurber, Peter Arno, and Katharine White among them — did more to make the magazine what it is than can be measured.”
Key cartoon collection: The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (Harper & Bros., 1932). Key anthology (writings & drawings): The Thurber Carnival (Harper & Row, 1945). There have been a number of Thurber biographies. Burton Bernstein’s Thurber (Dodd, Mead, 1975) and Harrison Kinney’s James Thurber: His Life and Times (Henry Holt & Co., 1995) are essential. Website
It’s always possible they were published somewhere else first, but those two drawings are in The Beast in Me. The two dogs are at the end of Here Come the Tigers, and the three dogs all after the same bone are at the end of the book. A great pickup for someone!
Thank you for IDing, Sara. Yes, someone did very well! Love the dogs.