It's been a decade now since the art exhibition "Cover Story: The New Yorker in Westport" showed how the thriving Connecticut community once provided a home base for a good bit of the magazine's artistic talent. On April 25, 2014, there was to be an auction of original New Yorker art to benefit the Westport Historical Society which had mounted the impressive exhibition, which was still running. One couple had provided the artwork which was shown in the exhibition area, but no auction was actually held. Instead, an attempt was made to sell the works by private treaty for the benefit of the museum. I hope it succeeded.
Works available included cartoons as well as covers. There were drawings by Peter Arno, Frank Modell, and James Stevenson (who was represented with two) that I have already reported on here, but somehow I never got around to the one original cartoon by Charles Saxon. It is high time I set matters straight.
Saxon's drawing is the kind of nuanced social satire of the upper classes one no longer sees much of in The New Yorker. He was a master of it. The original is a real beauty, with sumptuous shading and textures that can't fully come across in the printed cartoon.
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| "I assume we're all solvent here, so I'll speak freely." Charles Saxon Original cartoon art The New Yorker, June 30, 1980, p. 45 Westport Historical Society |
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| "I assume we're all solvent here, so I'll speak freely." Charles Saxon The New Yorker, June 30, 1980, p. 45 |
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| With an ad for Wild Turkey and a cartoon by Charles Saxon |
Note: Did that really take me ten years? If collectors of original Charles Saxon art would care to send me images of his work, I promise to post it in half the time. Maybe less.
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