Top-hatted and diapered, a smiling and chubby New Year's baby enjoys a glass of champagne and a cigar. This is the subject of an undated New Year's card from illustrator Rea Irvin. The seldom-seen image appears here courtesy of Stephen Kroninger.
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| A happy New Year 1867 — A happy New Year 1917 Life, January 4, 1917 |
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| Life, December 30, 1920 |
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| Life, December 29, 1921 https://www.ebay.com/itm/273062626905?hash=item3f93cd0659:g:~DcAAOSw8A1afddb |
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| The New Yorker, January 2, 1926 |
Father Time appears on the cover of The New Yorker to herald 1928. He's blowing bubbles.
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| The New Yorker, December 31, 1927 |
Then it's all aboard for 1929:
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| The New Yorker, December 29, 1928 |
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| The New Yorker, December 27, 1930 Image added January 8, 2022 |
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| The New Yorker, December 30, 1933 |
For the New Year of 1937, Irvin returns to the idea of his 1917 cartoon for Life, showing us again a sedate celebration from fifty years earlier. A girl dutifully serving her father can be seen in the 1917 gag as well. This New Yorker cover may originally have been intended for an earlier New Year; the last digit of the retro year 1887 has been altered.
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| The New Yorker, January 2, 1937 |
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| The New Yorker, December 31,1938 |
As an aside, we've seen two examples here of Irvin's penchant for mocking the staid manners of the 19th century.
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| A happy New Year 1867 — A happy New Year 1917 Life, January 4, 1917 |
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| The New Yorker, January 2, 1937 |
This has some bearing on his most famous image, which appeared on the cover of The New Yorker's first issue in 1925. It shows, of course, the figure we now know as Eustace Tilley, an anachronistic dandy in Regency dress coolly observing a butterfly through his monocle. If the 1917 and 1937 images above can serve as an example of Irvin's intent, Tilley may have been conceived ironically as a pretentious throwback from a full century earlier, a sleepy figure who represented the very opposite of the smart, irreverent magazine poised to take Jazz Age New York by storm.
Note: My thanks to illustrator Stephen Kroninger for sending me the scan of the New Year's card that begins this post. This is Stephen's forty-fifth contribution to the blog. What a great way to start off the year!
Rea Irvin could well have drawn and published any number of additional cartoons and illustrations on the occasion of many a New Year. I'd love to be able to post more of these, and of course I'd also like to know what year the card is from. Please help me out if you can.
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