Attempted Bloggery: Reginald Marsh

Showing posts with label Reginald Marsh. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

A Century of The New Yorker at the New York Public Library

On Sunday I visited the New York Public Library to catch the exhibition "A Century of The New Yorker." The show's banner is behind the library lion known as Patience.

It's always best to start at Beginnings, but I will not be strictly chronological here.

Introduction with some of the magazine's library covers:

Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant started it all in 1925 (with the financial backing of Raoul Fleischmann).

The magazine's prospectus sold the idea of The New Yorker.

Rea Irvin's original artwork of the dandy we call Eustace Tilley is iconic.

A spot drawing of showgirls is by the pioneering cartoonist Barbara Shermund.

Some drawings of the city by Reginald Marsh circa the 1930s adorn the show as well.

What! No Pie Charts? has text by humorist Corey Ford and pictures by Julian de Miskey.

Preliminary art from 1934 is by Reginald Marsh for "It's her first lynching."

Giddap is a 1930 etching by Hale Woodruff.

J. D. Salinger gets his start in the pages of The New Yorker:

A spot drawing of a bus stop sign by K. Sterne:

A 1939 photograph of Dorothy Parker:

A lovely 1947 spot drawing by Susan Flint:

A 1946 pony edition of The New Yorker sent to servicemen overseas has a cover by James Thurber featuring several varieties of his dogs.

A 1940 photograph of "Letter from Paris" correspondent Janet Flanner, or Genêt, is by Carl Van Vechten.

A Fact Checking Department banner by Anne Mortimer-Maddox, c. 1970:

A 1948 photograph of New Yorker staff members and a fact checking memo from Frederick Packard to Ross:

An after-hours spot drawing by Garth Williams:

"This is going on all over!" The magazine increases its circulation outside of New York City.

A synchronous spot drawintg by Virginia Snedeker:

Original cartoon art by Helen E. Hokinson:

"I want to report a winking man."

And original art by Charles Addams, c. 1945. You may recognize the witch as Morticia, but this is well before Addams Family members had been given names.

"Oh, I couldn't make it Friday—I've so many things to do. It's the thirteenth, you know."

A full issue in 1946 was dedicated to John Hersey's "Hiroshima."

Copycat!

Cover by Charles Alston:

A dynamic 1948 spot drawing by Esther Pressoir:

Onward!

A 1975 spot drawing by Tom Funk:

A weighty 1982 spot drawing by Margit Steig:

Lillian Ross and William Shawn in an undated photograph:

Office typewriters of Lillian Ross and William Shawn:

Hannah Arendt's draft of "Eichmann in Jerusalem:"

A 1987 letter from Si Newhouse to the New Yorker staff announces William Shawn's resignation as editor.

Subsequently, staff writers at The New Yorker urge Robert Gottlieb not to accept his new post as editor:

Floor plan (2020) by Luci Gutierrez:

Kara Walker develops a cover:

Art by Barry Blitt and Roz Chast from the collection of the current editor David Remnick:

A poster by Bruce McCall for The New Yorker Festival, 2001:

Art Spiegelman:

Saul Steinberg. You may have seen this one.

Edward Koren's cartoon represents The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest:

A 1973 spot drawing by David Preston:

Don't forget to look up.

Outside the exhibition, there's Rembrandt Peale's portrait of George Washington after Gilbert Stuart:

05188

Friday, February 14, 2025

How Do You Like Your Portraits, Ernest?

Contributor David from Manhattan writes:

The recent essay by Adam Gopnik, "Subject and Object," is a careful dissection of the famous and controversial 1950 New Yorker profile by Lillian Ross, "How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?" illustrated, one forgets, with a tiny pen & ink drawing of [Ernest] Hemingway by Reginald Marsh.

Ernest Hemingway
Reginald Marsh
The New Yorker, May 13, 1950, p. 36

The long Ross Profile described her encounter with the famous author as he roamed Manhattan with Miss Ross in tow. Merely by quoting him at length (accurately as it turns out), and reporting how he moved through the day, the Hemingway in this profile comes across as a clown and a sad parody of himself. It hasn't been forgotten, as Gopnik makes clear. Published in time for the 100th anniversary issue of The New Yorker, the essay features a full-page color drawing by Barry Blitt, based, we are told in tiny print, on a photograph "courtesy Lillian Ross Estate."

Ernest Hemingway and Lillian Ross
Barry Blitt
The New Yorker, February 17 & 24, 2025, p. 151

Perhaps for that reason Blitt didn't sign his drawing, though a proper credit line appears beneath it. The drawing is not especially funny, something rarely said about a Blitt drawing. And to make things more interesting, in-between the Gopnik piece and Ross's original profile, she published "Hemingway Told Me Things" in the May 24, 1999 issue, about his letters and warm advice to her. This piece is illustrated with a caricature by Edward Sorel.

Lillian Ross and Ernest Hemingway
Edward Sorel
The New Yorker, May 24, 1999, p. 71

In 1999 Miss Ross wished to present Hemingway in a far more generous light than the 1950 piece, but forty-nine years is a long time to wait before applying damage control. Fortunately, Sorel, quietly ignoring Ross's good cheer, royally allowed himself an artist's fun with a famous author full of himself, and a still rising journalist not quite sure of what she was in for. The small background image of a photographer in the oval mirror with his flash, even reduced on the magazine page, is a masterful touch in a drawing far more elegant, accurate and funny than the Ernest in the Gopnik piece, though in fairness to Blitt, his Hemingway is clearly intended to be more illustration than target. It's unlikely that Sorel's drawing wasn't lodged in Blitt's memory; there was no reason to compete. But both artists are certainly on firmer ground than Reginald Marsh. His portrait of Ernest was left out, unfairly I think, when Simon & Schuster in 1961 reprinted the Ross profile in a very attractive clothbound 65-page book and retitled Portrait of Hemingway, the year of the author's death.