Claude Smith: The Happy Husband

Claude Smith called his seven-panel New Yorker cartoon of April 13, 1968, "one of my few supers!" On May 31, 1982, he pronounced it "Still a good one!" These notations were presumably made when the artist presented the original to a new owner. The art was sold in Brooklyn on January 4 for $400 plus a 28% buyer's premium.

Claude's drawing has an underlying assumption of female subservience rewarded only by male anger. The accommodating woman fails to make her husband happy, while his immature acting out brings him pleasure and contentment. Is it telling that Claude was so pleased with himself here?

Versos

The stamp indicates Ben Day was used for shading . . . but I don't see any shading.

Verso

Claude Smith's signature

Claude Smith
Antique Arena, Inc., sale of January 4, 2024

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195006709_claude-smith-original-new-yorker-magazine-cartoon

Claude Smith 
Antique Arena, Inc., sale of January 4, 2025

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195006709_claude-smith-original-new-yorker-magazine-cartoon/?from=alert&utm_source=LA_SavedAlert&utm_campaign=SearchAlert_20230912_A&utm_medium=email&utm_content=itemendingsoon

Note:  For once an auction house has really done its homework. If you'd like to do your homework too, send along images of some original Claude Smith art along with all the publication info. Be nice and I may even throw a coaster at you.

04848

The CartoonStock Cartoon Caption Contest No. 188

In the CartoonStock Caption Contest number 188, we are in a living room with a flying dog and its master. The dog may or may not be an angel; there's no halo.

The rules of the monthly cash prize contest have not changed (and neither has my description of them): Five dollars buys up to three entries. Real cash prizes are $500 for first place and $100 for each of five runners up. As of this writing, I've put $165 into the first thirty-three pay-to-play contests and this thirty-fourth challenge brings my total cash outlay up to $170. Having achieved runner-up status with two previous entries, I've collected $200 from CartoonStock, so I'm still playing with the house's money, thank goodness. In fact, so few contestants enter that the odds may generally be considered favorable even for us less-gifted caption writers. My three entries are shown below. The cartoonist is J. C. Duffy. 

"Guess what happened when I caught the car."
"So, it's true, you can't feed a dog chocolate."
"I never had my day."

January 12, 2025 Update:  The Judges Deliberate

February 9, 2025 Update:  The Winner

04847

My Entry in The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #927

The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #927 from the double issue of December 30, 2024 & January 6, 2025, is set in a corporate office inhabited by two businessmen—and four seagulls. Two of the seagulls are perched on the men's respective balding heads. The standing, more subordinate executive speaks. The drawing is by Kaamran Hafeez.

"And yet, the environmentalists still hate us."

 

January 19, 2025 Update:  The Finalists

January 24, 2025 Update:  I used my head and voted for the caption from Minneapolis.

February 1, 2025 Update:  The Winner

04846

Constantin Alajálov: Warning All Wives!

An article called "Warning All Wives!" published in McCall's was reprinted in the Reader's Digest issue of February 1964. Part II of a feature with the same name appeared in a February magazine issue, possibly McCall's, along with Constantin Alajálov's illustration, the original of which is reproduced here. The husband appears exhausted, the wife frustrated. What could possibly have gone wrong in the marriage bed?

Warning All Wives! (Part II)
Constantin Alajálov
McCall's[?], c. February 1964[?], p. 129

Verso

An undated, unsigned inscription on the back of the illustration board lists the price of this work at $1,250. The sale of the art at Stephenson's Auction in Southampton, Pennsylvania, on New Year's Day had the bidding start at $1,500, with an estimate of $3,000 to $6,000. No bids had been received as of two hours prior to the sale.

Constantin Alajálov
Stephenson's Auction listing accessed two hour before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195157904_constantin-alajalov-gouache-illustration-on-board

At the drop of the hammer, there was no sale:


Page 48 of the February 1964 Reader's Digest may contain a clue to this piece.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/333964401291

Note:  I'd like to hear from anyone with an image of this illustration in print—or with some advice for this poor woman.

04845

Charles Saxon for Jacuzzi Whirlpool Baths

Every now and then one comes across an original illustration framed alongside the published page. An example of this was sold on January 1 by Stephenson's Auction: a Jacuzzi ad with artwork by Charles Saxon.

Charles Saxon
Stephenson's Auction listing accessed ten hours before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195157906_charles-david-saxon-conte-crayon-illustration-art

Ten hours before the sale, the drawing had yet to receive it's opening bid of $100.

Sold! But for an embarrassingly low price.

Saxon, of course, was a popular New Yorker cartoonist, so it wouldn't be surprising for the ad to have been run in the magazine. I was able to find two other ads from the Jacuzzi Whirlpool Bath campaign that appeared in The New Yorker in 1979.

The diamonds are still here[,] dear, but they stole our Jacuzzi Whirlpool Bath.
Charles Saxon
The New Yorker, April 30, 1979, p. 75

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1979-04-30/flipbook/074/

It makes you feel good.
Even when you're not in it.
Charles Saxon
The New Yorker, May 14, 1979, p. 119

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1979-05-14/flipbook/118/

A listing on eBay doesn't provide the source of publication but at least confirms that the Being in hot water ad also dates from 1979.

Being in hot water
takes on a whole new meaning.
Charles Saxon

1979

https://www.ebay.com/itm/402347749601

Note:  I sure would like to know exactly where and when this was published. Also, if there are any other ads from this campaign with Charles Saxon illustrations, please do tell.

04844

Fortune's Bounty: Ronald Searle Original New Yorker Cover Art

The Angel of Fortune has bestowed its bounty on the deserving and the undeserving throughout the history of art, but it has never quite appeared as it does in Ronald Searle's cover for The New Yorker of August 13, 1990. Here both angel and mortal are cats and the Horn of Plenty is filled with something felines can truly appreciate. Searle's original art was sold on New Year's Day in Southampton, Pennsylvania.

Ronald Searle
Stephenson's Auction listing accessed 13 hours before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195157907_ronald-william-fordham-searle-illustration-art

Sold!

04843

The Owl and the Pussycat: Ronald Searle Original New Yorker Cover Art

The Owl and the Pussycat, beloved characters from Edward Lear's nonsense verse, make an appearance in Ronald Searle's New Yorker cover of July 27, 1992. In Lear's telling, they "went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat," but here they take that boat out onto Central Park Lake. Yesterday, the original Searle art was sold by Stephenson's Auctions of Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

The presale estimate was $300-$500 with the bidding starting at $150, absurdly low numbers all around. Seventeen potential bidders watched the item.

Ronald Searle
Stephenson's Auction listing 13 hours before the sale

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/195157908_ronald-william-fordham-searle-illustration-art

Sold! (To an internet bidder.)

Note:  For further reading, see the blog's 2020 post on Arnie Levin and Ronald Searle: The Owl and the Pussycat and The New Yorker. It's an old favorite of mine.

04842

W. B. Park: Charles, By the Clock

It just so happens that the very first of the original New Yorker cartoons offered by eBay seller Henning Fine Art in its current run of works from the estate of W. B. Park had been published with an exceedingly long caption. The words are not spoken but instead delivered in the form of a detailed minute-by-minute summary of the action in mock-documentary format. It's practically time-stamped. I recall that it sold in the same range as Park's other New Yorker originals, around $205; in other words, there was no surcharge for all the outsize prose.

     8:28: Charles stood up and strode into the kitchen. Everything was in readiness. He selected a fresh piece of stone-ground whole-wheat bread and balanced it carelessly in his left had. Behind him the electric wall clock hummed quietly. The peanut butter spread easily across the bread, Charles expertly turning the knife this way and that, guiding the creamy paste around the surface. The grape jelly proved more of a challenge, but he was equal to it. At precisely 8:30, he settled back into his chair, back into his reverie, back into the doubleheader.
W. B. Park
Original art
The New Yorker, October 3, 1988, p. 99

Detail, left

Detail, right, with W. B. Park's signature

W. B. Park
eBay listing c. mid-2024 archived on Worthpoint

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/original-yorker-illustration-drawing-4741038895

8:28: Charles stood up and strode into the kitchen. Everything was in readiness. He selected a fresh piece of stone-ground whole-wheat bread and balanced it carelessly in his left had. Behind him the electric wall clock hummed quietly. The peanut butter spread easily across the bread, Charles expertly turning the knife this way and that, guiding the creamy paste around the surface. The grape jelly proved more of a challenge, but he was equal to it. At precisely 8:30, he settled back into his chair, back into his reverie, back into the doubleheader.
W. B. Park
The New Yorker, October 3, 1988, p. 99

     8:28: Charles stood up and strode into the kitchen. Everything was in readiness. He selected a fresh piece of stone-ground whole-wheat bread and balanced it carelessly in his left had. Behind him the electric wall clock hummed quietly. The peanut butter spread easily across the bread, Charles expertly turning the knife this way and that, guiding the creamy paste around the surface. The grape jelly proved more of a challenge, but he was equal to it. At precisely 8:30, he settled back into his chair, back into his reverie, back into the doubleheader.
W. B. Park
Original art
The New Yorker, October 3, 1988, p. 99

With an advertisement for DeBeers and a cartoon by W. B. Park

https://archives.newyorker.com/newyorker/1988-10-03/flipbook/098/

Note:  Here then in the archives is an original cartoon by George Booth, possibly unpublished, with another of those very long captions you've been hearing so much about. 

04841