Attempted Bloggery: original artwork by Claude Smith

Showing posts with label original artwork by Claude Smith. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Claude Smith: Coming Home to the Right Wife

The original artwork for a seven-panel cartoon by Claude Smith was offered for sale on eBay in 2013. At the end of the workday, a business man makes his way home to Apartment 4E where he notices that something is wrong. Stealthily he is able to correct his error before anyone notices, but is he better off?

The seller notes that a pencil inscription on a xerox copy of the cartoon suggests that it was published in the 1 January 1964 number of Punch. Then the seller goes on to make the farfetched conjecture that "...it may have appeared in the New Yorker as well as Punch." Now wouldn't that be something?

Meanwhile that xerox copy looks like a mock-up for printing, but the panels are all out of order. Why should that be? All the photographs have reflected glare as the cartoon was photographed framed under glass, but after shipping the buyer would face the added expense of having to reframe the seven panels.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-SIGNED-PUNCH-NEW-YORKER-PEN-INK-CARTOON-DRAWINGS-1964-BY-CLAUDE-SMITH-/301002139389?pt=UK_art_drawings_GL&hash=item46152026fd&nma=true&si=UB68sj2DvLx%252F9kdb54zXrlCgzYs%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Note: This blog has further postings on Claude Smith and on Punch cartoons

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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Claude's Caveman

I'm not sure when it happened or why, but it seems to me the multi-panel gag cartoon went out of favor a long time ago. It existed, often in ungainly form, long before the efficient, modern single-panel cartoon was perfected. In his day, A. B. Frost made a career out of extended sequential gags. In the European press, Jean-Jacques Sempé has published many memorable sequential panel gags, often with numbered panels. Back in the 1950's, the cartoonist Claude Smith published a number of such sequences in The New Yorker, and one particular example of his original art depicting an industrious caveman was sold recently on eBay.

Gags told over multiple panels allow a narrative to unfold sequentially. Given the enduring popularity of comics and animation, one would think a series of drawings relating a humorous story would remain quite popular. For the most part, though, it hasn't, and the field has been ceded to the animators and comic book artists.

Claude's caveman sequence could not readily be reduced to a single panel. Most likely the widespread introduction of television into the American living room in the 1950's gave this gag its particular relevance to its time . This sequence, like almost all cartoons from this era, certainly wouldn't be considered for publication today, its payoff being a little too mundane for all the effort expended.