Saul Steinberg: Now or Never!

Many fine and wonderful items get away from me on eBay but this one hurt: an original drawing from The New Yorker by Saul Steinberg. It is from the collection of Neil and Susan Sheehan, she a writer for the magazine, and it was sold hours before I ever became aware of it. I doubt whether one could have gotten such a good price, $750, even as far back as 1980. The publication date was in 1969.

Now or Never!
Saul Steinberg
Framed original art
The New Yorker, August 30, 1969, p. 23

The drawing may very well be untitled but I took the liberty . . .

Saul Steinberg's signature

There are, unfortunately, condition issues. Art of this quality should have been framed archivally from the getgo. The framing, I believe, was the work The New Yorker.

Detail

Saul Steinberg
eBay listing ended May 15, 2026

https://www.ebay.com/itm/406928826919?itmmeta=01KRSRVE2VSGAREKR3PV814J9W&hash=item5ebed92227:g:1owAAeSw44JqByyE

Saul Steinberg
eBay item description

Now or Never!
Saul Steinberg
The New Yorker, August 30, 1969, p. 23

Now or Never!
Saul Steinberg
Framed original art
The New Yorker, August 30, 1969, p. 23

With a spot drawing of the Seine by FP and a drawing by Saul Steinberg

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1969-08-30/flipbook/022/

* * *

On the opposite page of the spread is a much smaller spot drawing signed FP. It is a lovely evocation of the Seine in Paris, a place New Yorker readers might well visit in the month of August. The art is direct and bold and in no way trying to compete with the Steinberg. Does anyone recognize the illustrator to whom those initials belong?

Spot drawing of the Seine
FP
The New Yorker, August 30, 1969, p. 22

05265

Pegeen and Jean Hélion's Copy of All in Line by Saul Steinberg

A signed copy of Saul Steinberg's All in Line (1945) is generally worth a look, especially when there is also an original drawing. Listed online by Black Gull Books of St. Leonard's-on-Sea, a copy is described with the intriguing words "Signed with a drawing on half-title page" and the less welcome "Boards show wear, upper spine ragged." The cover, lacking a dust jacket, is photographed in its protective acetate jacket.

The listing has no photograph, though, of that crucial interior half-title page. The price, around 200 GBP, comes to over $300 with shipping. Ordinarily, in this situation I might write one of my "Sight Unseen" posts: one, that is, where I order the book despite not getting a good look at it and then report on whether it met or didn't meet my expectations. Either way, it's a bit of a gamble and recent market uncertainty has left me less willing to commit real money to a book that might not live up to its description. So instead I asked the bookseller for another photograph and then began the long process of waiting, wondering whether a less risk-averse collector would take the plunge while I was napping at poolside.

Saul Steinberg
AbeBooks listing accessed May 27, 2028

https://www.abebooks.com/signed/Line-Saul-Steinberg-Duell-Sloan-Pearce/32207585801/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&ref_=pe_aep_AEP_wants_buyer-wants&cm_ite=viewbook_high

Saul Steinberg
AbeBooks item description

After two or three days, the requested photograph arrived revealing a 1948 inscription with a drawing of a man raising his hat. It all looks authentic to my eye.

This drawing recalls a similar one Steinberg gave to cartoonist Sam Cobean and his wife Anne, also in a copy of All in Line, which you can see in the archives here. Already Steinberg was traveling in rarefied artistic circles as the book's recipients demonstrate. Pegeen, a painter, was born Pegeen Vail Guggenheim, the daughter of art collector Peggy Guggenheim and writer Laurence Vail. She was married to French modernist artist Jean Hélion from 1946 to 1956. This was the couple's copy of the book. And now it's mine.

Note:  There is always room on this blog for other books personally embellished by Saul Steinberg.

04954

Saul Steinberg: Window Upright Eiffel Tower Center

Even after all these years, Saul Steinberg's still lives can simply take one's breath away. Just about the only think not to like about the 1979 colored pencil drawing sold yesterday in Swann Auction Galleries' Modern & Post-War Art sale is its title: Window Upright Eiffel Tower Center. But one could learn to live with it.

Saul Steinberg
Swann Galleries Modern & Post-War Art listing of May 22, 2025

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/SAUL-STEINBERG-(1914---1999-AMERICAN)-Window-Upright-Eiffel-?saleno=2705&lotNo=81&refNo=824292

Sold, for a hammer price of $19,000.

Note:  Your original Saul Steinberg artwork too can be shared on this blog, especially if it has a good title.

04949

Saul Steinberg and Sarula Bao at "Covering The New Yorker"

There is one example of Saul Steinberg's New Yorker cover art in the exhibition "Covering The New Yorker" at L'Alliance New York. Unusually, it made the journey directly from sketchbook page to New Yorker cover.

The Man in the Mirror
Saul Steinberg
Original art
The New Yorker, January 12, 1998

The Man in the Mirror
Saul Steinberg
The New Yorker, January 12, 1998

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1998-01-12/flipbook/CV1/

Sarula Bao's 2024 cover Lunar New Year celebrates the Year of the Dragon. The cover art is reproduced in a limited edition signed print, of which this is no. 31/50.

Lunar New Year
Sarula Bao
Signed Print, no. 31/50
The New Yorker, February 5, 2024

Lunar New Year
Sarula Bao
The New Yorker, February 5, 2024

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/2024-02-05/flipbook/CV1/

04891

Saul Steinberg at "Drawn From The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration"

Saul Steinberg's New Yorker cover of January 17, 1959, is one that needs to be not only seen but read. The central figure on the impossibly grandiose monument depicted is Prosperity unfettered, while the surrounding paired figures reveal so very much about the contradictions inherent in America that Steinberg observed through his immigrant's eyes. The striking original art is currently on view at the Society of Illustrators, part of the essential show "Drawn From The New Yorker: A Centennial Celebration" curated by Liza Donnelly.

Saul Steinberg
Original art
The New Yorker, January 17, 1959

Saul Steinberg
The New Yorker, January 17, 1959

https://www.ebay.com/itm/315976742221....

Meanwhile, the breadth of Steinberg's wildly inventive drawings inside the magazine is represented by a single image from 1963.

Saul Steinberg
Print
The New Yorker, February 23, 1963, p. 24

 

Saul Steinberg
The New Yorker, February 23, 1963, p. 24

With drawings by Saul Steinberg and Robert Day

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1963-02-23/flipbook/024/

* * *

It's not a part of the exhibition, of course, but on the printed page Steinberg's linear flight of artistic fancy is set opposite a wash drawing by Robert Day seeking humor in the not-so-humdrum daily business commute.

"A stockholder, maybe."
Robert Day
The New Yorker, February 23, 1963, p. 24

04890

Saul Steinberg: Flying Harpies

Saul Steinberg's Flying Harpies was sold at Swann Galleries in the December 12 Illustration Art sale. It is dated 1965 but it bears a 1966 copyright stamp for the year it was published in Le Masque. While far from Steinberg's most finished work, it does have some of his familiar elements: a rainbow, reflections in water, and a map.

Saul Steinberg
Swann Galleries Illustration Art sale of December 12, 2024
Hammer price

https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction-lot/SAUL-STEINBERG-(1914-1999)-Flying-Harpies?saleno=2690&lotNo=195&refNo=823462

With Buyer's Premium

04828

Saul Steinberg: Gallery Flyer from 1952

Contributor Scott Burns has turned up a variant on the Saul Steinberg lettersheet we saw here last week issued for the 1952 art exhibition "Drawings" upon which gallerists Sidney Janis and Betty Parsons collaborated. This flyer, unlike the lettersheet, does not have two blank sides on the inside. Rather, the four drawings from the outside of the lettersheet are folded into the inside of the flyer, and the outside of the flyer is a wraparound drawing of Venice's Piazza San Marco with the printed announcement of the show.

A Wikipedia photo dated 2021 is shown for reference. Steinberg's vantage point was evidently higher up in the colonnade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_San_Marco#/media/File:P
iazza_San_Marco_(Venice)_at_night-msu-2021-6449-.jpg

Note:  I am grateful to Scott Burns who seems to know what I want to see even before I do. This is his nineteenth contribution to Attempted Bloggery.

If you too have something I want to see by Saul Steinberg, feel free to send a few images without my having to ask.

04805

Saul Steinberg: The 1966 Sidney Janus Gallery Catalogue

Tireless contributor David from Manhattan reports on a 1966 catalogue from the Sidney Janis Gallery of New York that includes the Saul Steinberg work Art Lovers sold just last week at Swann Galleries. He writes:

1966 was a very good year for Saul Steinberg, beginning with a hugely successful show at Galerie Maeght in Paris. But then, all through the summer and early fall, he prepared for an exhibition with Sidney Janis. According to his biographer, Deirdre Bair, Steinberg compared his labor to "an exam in a French Lycée." But it paid off. The 11 x 8 1/2" catalogue lists 76 works, with only 20 illustrated, all in black-and-white, and not particularly well-reproduced, though Art Lovers in the number 10 spot was given a two-page spread at the midpoint as compensation. But buyers were not deterred by the listless reproductions. A number of his pictures involved viewing or creating works of art, and this turned out to be rather prescient. Even allowing for exaggeration and rounding off of numbers, Steinberg happily wrote to Aimé Maeght: "I sold 80 pictures at respectable prices—even more and at higher prices than Paris. Naturally this gives me great pleasure."

Naturally. Steinberg hadn't had a show in Manhattan in thirteen years, and perhaps art buyers were getting impatient. 1966 was also the year the artist received sage advice on the art of copyright from his Hungarian lawyer, Alexander Lindey, who not so coincidentally was an author of a textbook on copyright law. Inside the front cover is a great deal of white space, with only "© 1966 By Saul Steinberg" in tiny print at top. Steinberg had listened, even if he didn't borrow Lindey's book. The list of works in this show, with some titles familiar, and others intriguing, makes one hungry for another Steinberg exhibition.

Front cover

11. Dealers

 

Back cover
Ariadne (large detail)

Ariadne (1966) today resides in the North Carolina Museum of Art. Here's the full image:

Ariadne (1966)
Saul Steinberg
North Carolina Museum of Art

https://ncartmuseum.org/object/ariadne/

Note:  Today's words and images are provided by David from Manhattan, to whom once again I offer my sincere thanks. This is his sixty-fourth contribution to the blog.

04803

Saul Steinberg: Gallery Lettersheet from 1952

Today David from Manhattan writes of a rare eBay acquisition related to Saul Steinberg, who has been our subject these past three days:

Saul Steinberg was close to Betty Parsons, the artist and brilliant gallery owner who was an early champion of mid-century art. But even though, like others, he went over to the more commercial Sidney Janis Gallery in 1951, he made sure he didn't abandon Betty. When Steinberg's first Janis show opened in January 1952, the show included the Parsons Gallery, just across the hall from the Janis Gallery at East 57th St. This lettersheet, possibly a suggestion of Parsons with final approval of the drawings by Steinberg, is four pages, 9 1/2 x 6 7/8", illustrated front & back, and when opened, pages 2 & 3 are waiting to be written on. The text on front makes it clear the exhibition was a joint effort of the two gallerists. This was on eBay years ago as a Buy It Now listing. Memory suggests the price was around $50. But no complaints here, even if there wasn't a letter inside signed "ST" or maybe "Saul." After this show, the artist would have a self-imposed exile from exhibitions in New York until 1966.

Note:  I'm still thanking David from Manhatton for his ongoing contributions to the blog, and I'm still counting them. The number is now 63.

04802