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.
Over the years, Irvin created any number of images to celebrate the New Year. These were reproduced in magazines and newspapers and seen all over the country. A two-panel cartoon for the old Life magazine, for example, contrasted the supposed restraint of an 1867 New Year's celebration with the corresponding madcap revels of 1917, fifty years later. Irvin's signature from this era is very similar to what is printed on his New Year's card. |
A happy New Year 1867 — A happy New Year 1917
Life, January 4, 1917
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On its cover, Life rang in 1921 with an Irvin New Year's baby casting out the old year. The textures here are rich and vibrant. The elderly courtiers seated in the background seem superfluous here.
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Life, December 30, 1920
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Irvin's Life cover for the 1922 New Year is somewhat unconventional as well. Titled The Balloon Man, it proves that Irvin could render adorable babies when he wished to. In fact, the entire image is a pleasure to look at, but the gag, if it can be called that, seems a bit muddled.
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Life, December 29, 1921
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Irvin drew The New Yorker's very first New Year cover for 1926. His creation Eustace Tilley is seen uncharacteristically head-on in the midst of a cover that can be said to work like clockwork.
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The New Yorker, January 2, 1926
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Father Time appears on the cover of The New Yorker to herald 1928. He's blowing bubbles. |
The New Yorker, December 31, 1927
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Then it's all aboard for 1929: |
The New Yorker, December 29, 1928
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Irvin had the New Year's baby for 1931 carry the burden of Atlas.
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The New Yorker, December 27, 1930
Image added January 8, 2022 |
A glass of bubbly is raised high by a prancing faun on the New Yorker cover welcoming in 1934. It bears a close resemblance to the glass held by the baby with a cigar. |
The New Yorker, December 30, 1933
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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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Another Irvin baby raises a glass and appears overjoyed to welcome in 1939. This is a truly delightful cover, even if it is celebrating the ill effects of inebriation.
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The New Yorker, December 31,1938
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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
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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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