William Steig: Headstrong Husband

A 1970 New Yorker cartoon original by the great William Steig remained in the collection of Neil and Susan Sheehan for well over five decades, it seems. Then, along with a few other Steig drawings of theirs, it appeared suddenly on the market last weekend and was sold within twenty-four hours. At least we got to see it before it passed back into obscurity.

William Steig
Framed, original art
The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 20

William Steig's signature

The price was $500.

William Steig
AbeBooks listing ended May 17, 2026

https://www.abebooks.com/art-prints/ORIGINAL-1970-NEW-YORKER-CARTOON-Signed/32447228712/bd?cm_ven=nl&cm_cat=trg&cm_pla=want_CM&ref_=pe_aep_AEP_wants_buyer-wants&cm_ite=img

Careful readers may have noticed that this week's posts include no fewer than three Steig drawings featuring disembodied heads. Coincidence? Not exactly. Yesterday's post was a variation on this same theme as Steig worked through the idea in his New Yorker submissions. As for Tuesday's post with that knight raising the severed head, well, these things happen.

Oh, yes. Here's how today's drawing looked in The New Yorker:

William Steig
The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 20

William Steig
Framed, original art
The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 20

With drawings by William Steig and Charles Saxon

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1970-01-10/flipbook/020/

* * *

It can be no accident that the simple, direct contours of the emotionally overwrought Steig drawing are contrasted on the page opposite with the lush tones and genteel manner of the cartoon by Charles Saxon, who here is conscripted to play superego to Steig's id, if you will. 

"It seems to me that you've simply got to be for
or against sex these days."
Charles Saxon
The New Yorker, January 10, 1970, p. 21

So there you have it: a cartoon depicting surreal, raw anger and one with politicized, unsexy talk of sex, both spanning a single spread in The New Yorker back in January of 1970. 

By the way, I don't recall any other New Yorker artist so casually having his character self-decapitate as Steig has done here. For that matter, who else has resorted to this Saxon trick of placing a face at a dinner party between the candles in a candelabra? For the cartoonists, it's all about the faces.

Ah, there are such riches to be found in these back issues.

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Richard Taylor: Dinner Party Chat

What ever became of the dinner party? Richard Taylor's New Yorker cartoon of November 17, 1943, is set at a formal gathering where one guest seems to be out of his element.

"Professor Merton is a brilliant man in his field, but he has absolutely no small talk."
Richard Taylor
Original art
The New Yorker, November 27, 1943, page 27

Parties have been known to create social anxiety. We all want to feel we are masters of any given situation, and that conviction might grow when others appear more ill at ease than we ourselves are. So humor can be mined from our watching someone behave more embarrassingly than we would in the same circumstance. Still, there are times we might feel uncomfortable laughing at another person's awkwardness or ineptitude. At such times, it may be easier for us to laugh at truly eccentric individuals rather than the merely hapless.

Posture is so important. Professor Merton is hunched forward into his book, shifting his head below the line of heads on the far side of the dinner table. That's a good part of the reason he stands out.

Eye contact is also important. Two men have open mouths here, yet there is no question who is speaking. The man with the mustache leans toward his dinner companion and looks directly into her eyes. She returns his gaze. We are clearly listening in on their conversation. The man in the glasses is rendered without visible eyes and we don't get to see whom he is talking to.

Detail

The professor is also drawn without eyeballs, but we know what he's looking at. The woman on the left is Merton's dining companion. She stares expressionless across the table; she might as well be alone. For added emphasis, the woman on the far side of the prof is isolated from her partner, who is talking to the woman on the far right. Thus Taylor has contrived to leave the two women on either side of the professor with no one to interact. 

Detail

As we get farther away from the professor, the conversation gets decidedly more lively.

Detail

The caption is written in Taylor's hand:

Caption

Verso

Richard Taylor's signature

Verso New Yorker partial stamp

Richard Taylor
eBay listing ended December 16, 2018

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Richard-Denison-Taylor-Listed-Artist-New-Yorker-Magazine-Cartoon-Illustration-/123530613180?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&nma=true&si=YQGb25QThn5Fxe78BW8tTy6VzZY%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc

Richard Taylor
eBay item description

Richard Taylor
eBay Bid History
Eight bidders place fifty-five rather tentative bids.

[End of eBay listing]

"Professor Merton is a brilliant man in his field, but he has absolutely no small talk."
Richard Taylor
Original art
The New Yorker, November 27, 1943, page 27

Cartoons by Mischa Richter and Richard Taylor

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1943-11-27/flipbook/026/

Note:  Original art by Richard Taylor is always worth a good look. Collectors may submit scans or photos of Taylor art to this blog.

I am available most evenings for dinner parties provided I can write my next post between courses.

Thanks to David from Manhattan for pointing out to me that Taylor himself wrote the caption on the matte. David is a longtime contributor to this blog and has set me straight on any number of topics.

03759

Dinner Party Conversation: Constantin Alajálov New Yorker Cover Art

Born in Rostov, Russia in 1900, Constantin Alajálov landed in New York in 1923, and became a U.S. citizen in 1926. By 1939, when this New Yorker cover was published, he seemed to have enough of a command of English to satirize affected dinner party conversation. The seated guests are having a "perfectly grand time," to use one of the illustration's own lines, surrounded by a miasma of pretentious phrases. But are the words actually Alajálov's or did he have assistance from the magazine's editorial department?

Constantin Alajálov, Original cover art, The New Yorker, January 7, 1939
Reproduced in Illustration #23, page 72

http://www.culturaimpopular.com/2011/01/reyes-de-la-ilustracion.html

Constantin Alajálov, The New Yorker, January 7, 1939

Note:  I've been admiring the art of Constantin Alajálov here for about six weeks now and still my little survey is not quite ready to draw to a close.

Some of my favorite blog posts feature original New Yorker cover art. I don't see how anyone can get enough of this.

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