The life of Mata Hari informs our views of the alluring secret agent as seductress to this day. In 1917, the exotic dancer was convicted as a German spy and killed by firing squad in France.
Come 1940 and a second World War, cartoonist Peter Arno revisited the idea of the femme fatale as spy, giving her a new code name and her story a decidedly different ending.
Michael Maslin's biography Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker's Greatest Cartoonist had just been published, and it was cited by Beetles under Further Reading.
A scanned image shows some of the details. Arno's plaza seems German or Prussian. The two paired men, military and civilian, walk in lock step. That uniform of the man in front is impressive right down to the heel spurs. As we read left to right, the men lead our eyes to Q37 herself, in widow's garb, looking after her six children. The big joke is not merely the number of progeny but that they represent so many different races. Such racial caricatures were deemed acceptable in the pages of The New Yorker of 1940 by the editorial staff, the readership, and the advertisers.
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| "That's Q37, in her day one of the most effective secret agents this country ever had." Peter Arno Original art The New Yorker, August 24, 1940, p. 17 |
The original art came to light at Halls in early 2016.
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| Halls, 16th March 2016 |
Given a presale estimate of 600-800 GBP, it sold for a healthy 2,100 GBP.
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| https://www.lotsearch.net/artist/peter-arno/archive?orderBy=dollarBasedPrice-startPrice&order=ASC&perPage=50&page=1 |
The buyer, in all probability, was London illustration dealer Chris Beetles. The work was included in the catalogue for Beetles's annual The Illustrators sale for 2016:
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| Chris Beetles The Illustrators 2016 Catalogue |
Michael Maslin's biography Peter Arno: The Mad, Mad World of The New Yorker's Greatest Cartoonist had just been published, and it was cited by Beetles under Further Reading.
A scanned image shows some of the details. Arno's plaza seems German or Prussian. The two paired men, military and civilian, walk in lock step. That uniform of the man in front is impressive right down to the heel spurs. As we read left to right, the men lead our eyes to Q37 herself, in widow's garb, looking after her six children. The big joke is not merely the number of progeny but that they represent so many different races. Such racial caricatures were deemed acceptable in the pages of The New Yorker of 1940 by the editorial staff, the readership, and the advertisers.
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| "That's Q37, in her day one of the most effective secret agents this country ever had." Peter Arno The New Yorker, August 24, 1940, p. 17 |
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| A spot drawing and a cartoon by Peter Arno |
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| Horse in a blanket Spot drawing Artist Unidentified The New Yorker, August 24, 1940, p. 1 |
Note: I would appreciate hearing from anyone who retains a price list from the Chris Beetles 2016 catalogue for The Illustrators show. The item in question is no. 119.
Also, the spot artist's initials may be recognizable to someone in the know.
Do I need to keep asking for original art by Peter Arno to display in these pages? Yes, I think I do.
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