In 2017, three original ink drawings by William Steig were sold by the Clars Auction Gallery of Oakland. Each was framed with a title and date on the matte. The trio had a presale estimate of $600 to $900. No publication history was provided. The lot sold for $500.
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| William Steig Clars Auction Gallery auction June 17, 2017 |
So what exactly do we have here? All three drawings, it turns out, are related to The New Yorker. The earliest, at least by publication date, is the Garden of Eden drawing, a mirror-image variant of a 1975 cartoon from the magazine. The published version has a more imposing serpent and a more vertical woman.
The title and date on the matte are evidently spurious.
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| Drawings by William Steig and George Booth |
The drawing of the moonlit embrace on the veranda is a charming New Yorker original published in 1976.
Again, the date and title provided seem to be made out of whole cloth.
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| Drawings by Charles Barsotti and William Steig |
The wedding drawing was published in the magazine in 1977.
Here the alleged date is a full quarter century off. The supposed title seems a bit too obvious while not really reflecting the contrasting emotions in the drawing. It seems then that at some point all three dates and titles were just made up, perhaps to make a few easy sales without the bother of research.
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| Drawings by William Steig and Al Ross |
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