Your Portrait Drawn by C D Gibson For a Dollar!

The Good Old Days, When a Buck Could Buy...

a Portrait of Yourself by a Legendary Illustrator

by Rick Marschall

"War... What's It Good For?" is a song from the Vietnam era, and its answer is in small part, and somewhat cynically, "Charity Events." Here is a ticket from a 1943 event at the Grand Central Galleries in New York (Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, in the Hotel Gotham). The War was raging around the world, and a charity event was scheduled for the American Red Cross... whose cause is always worthwhile, through wars and rumors of wars.

The Galleries mounted an exhibition featuring the work of more than two dozen noted artists, illustrators, and sculptors. What a day that must have been! The exhibition... the chance to meet the artists... and the chance to have your portrait executed by one of the artists -- for the admission price: One dollar.

There were beginners, to be sure, but legends were there too: Howard Chandler Christy; Jo Davidson; and Charles Dana Gibson. This was a year before the death of the creator of the Gibson Girl, but he was still drawing and painting in semi-retirement at his home in Maine. For years his home was in Manhattan -- figuratively and literally. He chronicled the doings of High Society in the Victorian and Edwardian eras; and he lived on the top floor of the Life Building off Madison Square. He had purchased the magazine that made him famous after its founders died. (In recent years it was the Madison Square Hotel and was my pied a terre in New York City. The owner Abe Puchal furnished it in tribute to the legendary cartoon magazine, with framed Life covers and Gibson art in every room and stairwell.) 

Where are the portraits and sketches done that day, one wonders...

In the meantime, I've got Gibson on my mind. He is one of my favorite cartoonists, and I have so many of his books, illustrated novels, magazine covers and postcards, and ephemera as to have compiled a virtual catalogue raisonné of Gibson. Our dining room has been named The Gibson Room, with framed originals and signed prints on all walls.

At the moment I am happiest with my most recent acquisition -- a large drawing he did in Munich on a tour of the continent, Under the Lindens. Two Gibson Girls, an arresting genre scene, great personalities of his subjects. 

  

              

Gibson twice travelled to Europe to study painting, but could not forsake the pen-and-ink that established his fame. This original has touches of watercolor shading, indicating the time in his career when he experimented.

Here is an old photograph of Gibson and his wife, the former Irene Langhorne -- a Virginia belle whose sister was Lady Nancy Astor (the first woman to sit in the British Parliament) and among whose charity work was founding Big Sisters.

Charles Dana and Irene Langhorne Gibson

Cartoonists Ring In New Years!!!

 NEW YEARS 

CELEBRATED 

IN THE OLD YEARS!

by Rick Marschall

Cartoonists almost congenitally embrace holidays. Comic artists are inspired by happy events, and in turn inspire their readers. Serious artists and illustrators create commemorations. In general, a job of cartoonists is to celebrate things worthy of celebration.

There is the additional allure of holidays to cartoonists. On those days the artists do not have to scratch their heads quite so much to come up with ideas!

In any (or all) events, here are some New Years themes from Old Years. I have chosen from my collection images that -- by coincidence -- not only raise the glass to the New Year, but appeared in roughly "round number" years ago (unless you are reading this as an archive post...!)

(Above) Winsor McCay, as "Silas," drew this fanciful exception to my rule here. At the end of 1907 he drew this strip of Father Time replacing the old 1907 with a baby 1908. Where did Old Man 1907 reside? In a grandfather's clock, of course! This appeared in the New York Telegram.

We will proceed chronologically. One hundred fifty years ago, the Father of American Editorial Cartooning, Thomas Nast, introduced the New Year in his short-lived magazine Nast's Almanac.

Ten years later in Puck Magazine this greeting appeared. The drawing by Friedrich Graetz, an Austrian cartoonist who worked in the US for three years, is an original in my collection.

The prolific Dwig (Clare Victor Dwiggins) created dozens of strips from the Turn of the Century into the 1950s; and many hundreds of comic postcards in the century's first decade. This was sent in 1910. 

Almost a hundred years ago, in 1920, someone received this charming New Year card drawn by the amazing cartoonist Rose O'Neill (happy-spoiler alert: A major treatment of her life and work is in the works for the imminent arrival of NEMO Magazine!)

Also from my collection (on the wall, as you can see, of the Gibson Room in my house) from one century ago -- Charles Dana Gibson drew Life's cupid (mascot of his magazine, Life) toasting the baby cupid with the sash labeled "1925." This appeared as a cover of Life, and was then inscribed to Gibson's niece. 

The lone New Years cartoon sans smiles is also from the mid-1920s, by John Held Jr. Hoping that your own celebrations do not result in headaches -- nor, in fact, may any other activities in the upcoming Twelvemonth, we wish you a...

HAPPY 

NEW 

YEAR! 

A Crowded Life in Comics –

Happy Old Years!

Even during Prohibition – perhaps especially during Prohibition – New Year’s Day was widely observed as hangover day, as in this iconic cartoon by John Held, Jr.

by Rick Marschall

Christmas cards are only about 160 years old, mostly the children of an increasingly efficient postal service in English. In America they proliferated mostly as postcards, around 1900, ironically produced in their numbers in England and Bavaria. In fact many of the famed postcards and greeting cards of Raphael Tuck and Sons, “Stationers to the Queen” and King, were printed, die cut, and embossed in Bavaria’s print shops.

Thomas Nast, whose conception of Santa Claus is the one we know today, called upon Father Time for this drawing in his 1874 Nast’s Almanac. 

The success of Christmas themes and post-card formats, and rank commercialism, inspired studios to make mailed greetings a necessary component of every holiday thereafter. Valentine’s Day, of course; but also the Fourth of July; Hallowe’en; Easter… even New Years.

Charles Dana Gibson welcomed a new year with pen and ink and watercolor. This was inscribed to his niece, and was used on a cover of Life, 1925.

The Post Office likely was happy with this fad. Stamps cost a penny for a post card with an image on the front and address on the verso. For “divided backs” (if the sender wrote a message to the left of the address-space) two pennies would do.

Friederich Graetz drew for Puck for about three years, 1882-1885, and then returned to his his native Vienna whence he came; and was then associated with the humor magazine Der Floh for many years. His penwork was exquisite.

A major subdivision of these holiday post cards (purely humorous artwork was a major genre too) was cartoons. Famous cartoonists drew gags, or, frequently their famous characters. Through the years I have collected about 1500 of these – and they are fun, well composed and colored, and largely forgotten spin-offs of strips and their artists. Avoiding the ubiquitous roadside, and anonymously drawn, cartoons of fat women with skirts caught on barbed-wire fences, my albums have cards from around 1900-1925.

Clare Victor Dwiggins (Dwig) was, with R F Outcault, the most prolific of newspaper cartoonists who designed holiday and greeting cards. This from 1906.

Another category is the Christmas card that cartoonists draw not for post cards or for Hallmark racks, but for friends and fellow cartoonists and some fans. Of these I have about 1250, and many have been shared in NEMO, in Hogan’s Alley, and in Yesterday’s Papers.

But here, having dispatched the ghosts of Christmases past, I will share a few New Year’s drawings by cartoonists. Postal greetings, magazine cartoons, covers, special art. With a couple words as guides, they will speak for themselves. And I will speak for them to this extent – it is a nostalgic relief to visit times where New Years seemed bright, hopeful, and predictably Happy indeed. 

Throughout the ‘teens and ‘20s the Kewpies of Rose O’Neill populated magazine drawings, plush toys and ceramic figurines, children’s books, and… holiday post cards.

Many things in daily life have changed, however. Is it “progress” that a penny postal now costs 35 cents?

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Apologies to Rick and to Yesterday's Papers readers 

for late posting this. It should have been up a week ago!

John Adcock

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