Polly Rowles's Copy of Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939 by Janet Flanner

Janet Flanner's prewar "Letter from Paris" columns for The New Yorker were collected in 1972, edited many decades after the fact by Irving Drutman. The resulting volume is Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939. Jane Grant, who established the magazine with her husband Harold Ross, the founding editor, and financial backer Raoul Fleischmann, received some of her friend Flanner's letters and recruited her to the magazine in its first year. The author, who also wrote under the pseudonym Genêt, inscribed a copy of the book in 1973 to actress Polly Rowles at Sardi's.

Janet Flanner
AbeBooks listing accessed April 20, 2024

https://www.abebooks.com/signed/Paris-Yesterday-1925-1939-Flanner-Janet-Viking/31820893639/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&ref_=pe_aep_AEP_wants_buyer-wants&cm_ite=readmore

Janet Flanner
AbeBooks item description

Polly Rowles for Hanes, 1983

04647

Notre-Dame de Paris with Tourists: Anatol Kovarsky Preliminary New Yorker Cover Art

Anatol Kovarsky's cover study for The New Yorker issue of August 17, 1966 was created in New York. It depicts the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris from a high angle while the finished cover art showed a different top-down view. The original art for the study is available from Honey & Wax Booksellers while the published cover art, we learn, resides in the Morgan Library.

Anatol Kovarsky
Preliminary art
The New Yorker, August 17, 1966

Detail of buses

Detail with gargoyles

Detail of facade

Anatol Kovarsky
Preliminary art
The New Yorker, August 17, 1966

Anatol Kovarsky's signature

Anatol Kovarsky
Honey & Wax Booksellers listing accessed May 29, 2023

https://www.honeyandwaxbooks.com/pages/books/1003384/anatol-kovarsky/notre-dame-with-tourists

Anatol Kovarsky
Preliminary art
The New Yorker, August 17, 1966

Anatol Kovarsky
The New Yorker, August 17, 1966

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1966-08-13/flipbook/CV1/

The Morgan Library has not posted an online image of the original art and their issue date is off by a few days. "Title supplied by cataloger."

Anatol Kovarsky
The Morgan Library & Museum catalogue listing accessed May 31, 2023

https://www.themorgan.org/literary-historical/282674

June 29, 2023 Update:  Sold (on or before June 20)!

04336

Lászlo Roth: Esquire Cartoons

Yesterday's post about illustrator Lászlo Roth identified him as a New Yorker spot artist. This prompted reader Jeff Nelson to shed some light on another aspect of Roth's career. Jeff sent in three vintage color cartoons from Esquire magazine. These were published between January 1955 and January 1957. They are noteworthy for their versatile technique and for the prominent and unusual use of collage elements in each of them.

"Adam, I'm turning over a new leaf today!"
Lászlo Roth
Esquire, January 1955, page 47

Image courtesy of Jeff Nelson

"How are you fixed for blades?"
Lászlo Roth
Esquire, May 1956, page 83

Image courtesy of Jeff Nelson

"I've been coming here for fifteen years and they haven't struck oil yet[.]"
Lászlo Roth
Esquire, January 1957, page 90

Image courtesy of Jeff Nelson

From Esquire Classic:

Note:  My sincere thanks go to contributor Jeff Nelson for allowing me to keep this Lászlo Roth appreciation going a bit longer.

03723

Ronald Searle: Lucifer Reading

An autograph drawing and letter in French dated 19 October 1970, bears the printed address of Monica and Ronald Searle's Paris apartment at 4 Rue Antoine-Dubois. Searle, who could draw as well in French as in English (I can't vouch for the writing), has given his lucky recipient a compellingly grotesque image of the devil immersed in a book. Personally, I love the tension of the chair tilting off to the right as Lucifer leans to the left, his cloven hooves contrasted with the claw feet of the chair.

Note:  I downloaded this image years ago, pre-blog, most likely from a site where the original note was offered for sale. I am happy now to restore it to the internet even though I have no information at all about it. I would be pleased to hear from anyone who does know a little something about the letter, or who can make the French out well enough to render it in reasonable English.

Other inspired scribblings of Ronald Searle, particularly those new to the 'net, are always welcome here.


Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives:

Ronald Searle

Paris

Autograph Drawings, Signed

Attempted Bloggery's Damnable Index

02849

James Thurber: Marriages Are Made in Heaven

James Thurber, noting that "Marriages Are Made in Heaven," makes an appropriately celestial drawing on stationery of the École des Beaux-Arts. The composition and the figures are delightful, but note how oddly Thurber has linked the arms of the couple as if they are ribbons. There's no point where one person's arm ends and the other's begins. While this could be mere shoddy draughtsmanship, the looping arms might instead be meant to represent lines of orbit, something that would be in keeping with the heavenly theme of the drawing.

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven

James Thurber's signature

James Thurber
eBay Listing accessed November 13, 2017

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Marriages-are-Made-in-Heaven-by-James-Thurber/182877265505?hash=item2a94559e61:g:RZAAAOSwoF1ZwYYi

James Thurber
eBay item description

February 27, 2021 Update:  The Thurber art has new photos, new frame, new price, and a new eBay seller, apparently, in the same town:

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven

Caption

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven
eBay listing accessed February 27, 2021

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Ink-Drawing-By-James-G-Thurber-Marriages-Are-Made-In-Heaven-Undated/184680967950?hash=item2affd7ef0e:g:chIAAOSwCh1gNvdd#viTabs_0

James Thurber
Marriages Are Made in Heaven
eBay item description

December 28, 2022 Update:  Plot twist! I just found out that this drawing was sold back in 2017, not on eBay where I had been following it and not in Gilbert, Arizona where the eBay sellers were both located, but at a Newark, Ohio auction house approximately forty miles from Thurber's home town of Columbus. It went for a shockingly low $450 plus a 20% premium. This is an all-too-common scenario wherein the seller of a minor treasure initially asks too much, gets frustrated by the almost predictable lack of interest, and ultimately holds a fire sale and accepts too little. It reads like a morality play.

James Thurber
Apple Tree Auction Center
September 7, 2017

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/james-thurber-1894-1961-ink-on-paper-marriages-ar-3362-c-f3e443d8da?objectID=122924165&algIndex=archive_prod&queryID=6a8e8c8a992c3a9316fa7b5b74cf7ec2#

ames Thurber
Apple Tree Auction Center item description

Note:  I would love to see any other example of a drawing by James Thurber in which arms are linked in this strange manner, if such a thing exists anywhere else. Of course, any Thurber drawing is always welcome here, even an anatomically correct one, again if such a thing exists.

Happy 26th anniversary to my wife!

Quick Links to the Attempted Bloggery Archives

James Thurber

Anniversaries, Wedding and Otherwise

Attempted Bloggery's Armed and Dangerous Index

02368

Peter Arno: La Vie Parisienne

The worldly Peter Arno wants you to know your way around Paris. Note how well he handles the lighting of this after-dark street scene and how distinctly out of place the American couple at the center of this image appears.

Swann Galleries, January 22, 2015, Sale 2372, Lot 191, Hammer Price

http://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/asp/fullcatalogue.asp?salelot=2372+++++191+&refno=++698618&image=0

With Buyer's Premium

"We've lost our tour."
Peter Arno, The New Yorker, July 4, 1953, page 30
Spot drawing of a dog by Abe Birnbaum

http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1953-07-04#folio=030

Note:  How many blogs do you think can give you a tour of original New Yorker cartoon art? I promise you won't get lost.

If I'm counting right, there are 67 previous blog posts here which mention Peter Arno. Have a look at any or all of them, but remember:  I can't keep this up forever. If you'd like to share any original art, correspondence, photos, or obscure Arno publications, get in touch—and soon!

01868

Yank Friendliness Comes to the Eiffel Tower

During the Second World War, Hitler had given orders to burn Paris and blow up the Eiffel Tower in advance of the Allied invasion, orders that his generals and deputies refused to carry out. A 1945 Coca-Cola ad celebrates the liberation of Paris with an illustration that includes the city's most famous site. Specifically, it pays tribute to the American soldier and his "Yank friendliness" in sharing his favorite soft drink with the locals. The illustration for Coke is by Louis Douché, who is virtually unknown.

Louis Douché, Coca-Cola advertisement, Life, 1945

Note:  Read more from this blog about the Eiffel Tower.

Read more about Coca-Cola.

01142

Constantin Alajálov: A Room with a View

Constantin Alajálov's 1956 cover for the Saturday Evening Post shows an American couple checking in to a Parisian hotel room with an incredible view. Or two.

Constantin Alajálov, The Saturday Evening Post, July 14, 1956

http://www.amazon.com/Saturday-Evening-France-Eiffel-Alajalov/dp/images/B005GXYXJU

Note:  Read more about the Eiffel Tower.

Read more about Constantin Alajálov.

Read more about the Saturday Evening Post.

01141

The Eiffel Tower's Anniversary

Gustave Eiffel's Tower opened 125 years ago today at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. It was envisioned as a temporary structure that would remain for only twenty years. It is our great fortune that this masterpiece of engineering and design still stands. There are about 7 million paying visitors each year, which is more than at any other site in the world.

In Saul Steinberg's 1961 New Yorker cover, a pair of American tourists, cameras around their necks, descend as if fired from cannons upon a great confection of European destinations prominently including the Eiffel Tower.

Saul Steinberg, The New Yorker, June 10, 1961

In a cartoon published almost thirty years after the Steinberg cover, James Stevenson too has assembled an array of prominent tourist destinations. Like Steinberg, he includes the Eiffel Tower and London's Big Ben, because not to include them would be unthinkable.

James Stevenson, "Gee, honey, this place has got everything."
The New Yorker, January 15, 1990, page 36

J. B. Handelsman has shrunk the tower quite a bit to a more human scale. He suggests the Eiffel Tower has an iconic status akin to New York's Empire State Building. Maybe it does, but the Eiffel Tower gets twice as many paying visitors each year.

J. B. Handelsman, Le Roi Kong, April 27, 1998, The New Yorker, page 123

Note:  You're in luck! The Eiffel Tower appears on this blog in one previous post.

01140