Peter Arno: All Aboard the Elevator

A classic cartoon by The New Yorker's Peter Arno was sold on eBay this past Sunday:

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

True, we don't usually see manually-operated elevators these days, but they were once commonplace in New York apartment buildings. Arno extracts an awful lot of physical humor from the situation. Contrast the couple's awkwardness with the upright posture of the elevator operator.

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

Each of Arno's faces adds to the comedy.

The typed caption is affixed to the art, a no-no. The word told isn't even underlined.

Peter Arno's signature

Evidently the frame is not perfect.

Peter Arno
eBay listing ended May 12, 2024

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276453401977

Peter Arno
eBay item description

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

"I told you we should have given them something for Christmas."
Peter Arno
Original art
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 16

With a cartoon by Peter Arno and a spot drawing by Susanne Suba

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1938-01-01/flipbook/016/

A copy of this issue offered on Amazon clearly shows the cartoon to be on page 14, not 16. If the photograph looks familiar, it's because the seller used a lower-resolution version of this image as the final one in the listing. This magazine listed on Amazon is no doubt one of the regional variants lacking some of the pages in the New York metropolitan edition which the magazine kept as file copies.

Page variant

https://www.amazon.com/Jan-1-1938-New-Yorker-Midgettes/dp/B00ODDX8JK

In addition, the cartoon was collected in Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1941), Cartoon Cavalcade (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943), The Penguin Peter Arno (Penguin, 1949, 1957), and no doubt elsewhere.

Peter Arno's Cartoon Revue (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1941)

Craven, Thomas, ed. Cartoon Cavalcade (Chicago: Consolidated Book Publishers, 1945 edition)

The Penguin Peter Arno (Penguin, 1957)

* * *

Spot of a woman unbuttoning by a mirror
Susanne Suba
The New Yorker, January 1, 1938, p. 17

Note:  Original cartoon art by Peter Arno comes to eBay only when it is changing hands. We can enjoy even more Arno originals here when generous collectors choose to share their art virtually here. You may take that as a hint. Thank you, and don't forget to tip your blogger.

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George Grosz: Postcard of an Artist Colony

Today illustrator Stephen Kroninger shares a postcard sent by George Grosz, then summering in Cape Cod, to his friend, the art critic Thomas Craven. The postcard, written and postmarked in Truro on June 29, 1939, depicts an "artist colony on the Cape." Grosz has amended the picture with "Lots of painters and paint around here." And, apparently, sunhats.

            "29.6.39
Dear Tom & Eileen [Aileen],                        
Greetings to you from the very lovely Truro
            as ever yours
George & Eva Grosz"

Craven was a champion of the American Regionalist painters and the editor of Cartoon Cavalcade (1943).

Thomas Craven, ed.
Cartoon Cavalcade, 1943

Later in 1939, Grosz's portrait of Craven would appear on the cover of The Saturday Review of Literature.

George Grosz
Portrait of Thomas Craven
The Saturday Review of Literature
September 30, 1939

https://www.ebay.com/itm/312752735536?hash=item48d1840530:g:sQUAAOxyW1NRESuu

Grosz didn't require an artist colony in order to paint on the Cape:

George Grosz
Dunes of Cape Cod, 1939

http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-grosz/dunes-of-cape-cod-Lde0Z_jIzOuDBunEx7_67g2

Note:  Over years now of my posting many top notch contributions from him, I never suspected that master collagist Stephen Kroninger also collected postcards. This is his thirty-eighth contribution to Attempted Bloggery and his very first postcard. Thank you, Stephen.

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