Original New Yorker art by cartoonist Charles E. Martin, or C.E.M., was auctioned by Bonhams on December 5. It dates from 1971, a time when it was not unusual for drawings to take up three-quarters, or even more, of the printed page. The elaborate cartoon depicts a large telescope within an observatory. Two small figures, evidently astronomers, stand on an elevated platform, one of them looking through the eyepiece and reporting his observation. Large cartoons like this one have seemingly disappeared from the magazine in recent years. As a result, such a grand representation of scale is difficult for artists to convey today in The New Yorker anywhere but on the cover. Yet scale can be deceiving, as the caption reveals.
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| "I seem to be eyeball to eyeball with a Canada goose." Charles E. Martin Original art The New Yorker, May 8, 1971, p. 41 |
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| "I seem to be eyeball to eyeball with a Canada goose." Charles E. Martin Framed original art The New Yorker, May 8, 1971, p. 41 |
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| Charles E. Martin Freeman's listing accessed November 20, 2022 |
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| "I seem to be eyeball to eyeball with a Canada goose." Charles E. Martin Original art The New Yorker, May 8, 1971, p. 41 |
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| Verse by W. H. Auden, a spot drawing, and a cartoon by Charles E. Martin |
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| Spot drawing Artist unidentified |
Note: Kindly identify the spot artist, above, for me if you can and then I will be able to do the same for everyone. That spot artist handles the small scale as well as Charles E. Martin handles his large-scale composition. Images of other original art by CEM (I'll leave the periods to him) would be welcome for use on the blog in future posts.
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