How Much Is That Doggie?
This lovely Thurber dog is listed by Between The Covers, a bookseller of interest (the catalogs are always fascinating). The seller declined to date the drawing, but it’s very safe to say it’s later Thurber, but not as late as the Thurber dog shown below. Thurber dogs drawn near the end of his life — in the decade before he passed away in 1961 — are far less defined than the one above. Oh, by the way, to answer my own question: the doggie costs $3,500. The one below is a little more than half that: $1,750.
James Thurber’s 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
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Attempted Bloggery On A Kovarsky Original
From Attempted Bloggery, June 1, 2023, “The Third Avenue El: Anatol Kovarsky Proposed New Yorker Cover” — The AB‘s Stephen Nadler looks closer at this beautiful piece by the late great New Yorker artist.
Mr. Kovarsky’s A-Z Entry:
Anatol Kovarsky (photo above, NYC, 2013. By Liza Donnelly) Born, Moscow. Died, June 1, 2016, NYC. Collection: Kovarsky’s World (Knopf, 1956) NYer work: 1947 -1969. Link to Ink Spill’s 2013 piece, “Anatol Kovarsky at 94: Still Drawing After All These Years”
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