Tuesday Spill: A Group…Peter Arno, Warren Miller, Richard Cline; A Note About Ink Spill

                              A Group…Peter Arno, Warren Miller, Richard Cline

Yet another grouping of New Yorker artists — this group less random than the ones before. I thought it made for an interesting contrast of the Arno / Miller school of strong graphics next to the school of the finer line, with a Richard Cline original drawing as an example. 

The Arno sketch is undated, but I’m going to guess it’s from the early 1930s (guessing based on how his drawing style changed in that decade. This is the more fluid style he used before his Rouault phase kicked in big-time). The Warren Miller drawing appeared in The New Yorker‘s 55th anniversary issue (February 25, 1980). One of the few Arno quotes I was able to find referencing a New Yorker colleague came by way of Barbara Nicholls, who was James Geraghty’s assistant in the early 1960s. She told me that Arno said of Warren’s work: “It looks like he draws with the end of a burnt stick.”   

Richard Cline’s drawing, a very fine pen line, looks the opposite of a burnt stick. His work is all airy lines. Here’s a close-up of Richard Cline’s Artist Sleeping:

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The A-Zs of those referenced above: 

Peter Arno Born Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr., January 8, 1904, New York City. Died February 22, 1968, Port Chester, NY. New Yorker work: 1925 -1968. Key collection: Ladies & Gentlemen (Simon & Schuster, 1951) The Foreword is by Arno. For far more on Arno please check out my biography of him, Peter Arno: The Mad Mad World of The New Yorker’s Greatest Cartoonist (Regan Arts, 2016).

James Geraghty (photo: Geraghty in his office at The New Yorker, 25 West 43rd St., 1948. Used with permission of Sarah Geraghty Herndon). Born Spokane, Washington, 1904. died Venice, Florida, January, 1983. While not a cartoonist, Geraghty’s contribution to the art of the New Yorker was substantial. He contributed material to cartoonists before and during his association with The New Yorker, where he served as art editor from 1939 until 1973, when the title passed to Lee Lorenz. In Geraghty’s NYTs obit (Jan 20, 1983), William Shawn said: “Along with Harold Ross, who was the first editor of the magazine, Geraghty set the magazine’s comic art on its course and he helped determine the direction in which the comic art would go and is still going.”

Warren Miller (photo by Liza Donnelly, NYC, Sept. 1997) Born 1936, Chicago, Ill. The following biographical information comes from The Phoenix Gallery site which hosted a group exhibit of NYer cartoonists work (Lorenz, Harris, Modell, and Miller) in 2007: “Warren Miller studied commercial and fine art at the American Academy of Art, Chicago. He started selling cartoons to Playboy and The New Yorker in 1961 and moved to New York City later that year. Miller’s work has also appeared in Esquire, Punch, Rolling Stone, Audubon, Harvard Business Review, Barrons, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, and the London Sunday Times. Mr. Miller is a painter and a sculptor as well. He has exhibited his work in a number of shows in the New York area and in the Midwest.” Key collections: All Thumbs (Bobbs-Merrill,1967); Prince and Mrs. Charming (Bobbs-Merril, 1970). New Yorker work: 1959 –.

 

Richard Cline (photo, NYC, 1984) New Yorker work: 1981 – 2001.

 

 

 

Barbara Nicholls

I have very little information about Barbara Nicholls, other than she worked at The New Yorker in the early 1960s as Mr. Geraghty’s assistant, and later started her own gallery that showcased some of the major New Yorker artists of that time.

Photo above: Ms. Nicholl’s in 1987 at the Boston opening of Art Of The New Yorker: A 60 Year Retrospective (she curated the exhibit).

Would appreciate hearing from anyone with more information on Ms. Nicholls.  

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A Note About Ink Spill

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