George Wachsteter

1946 Broadway Revival of James M. Barrie's "What Every Woman Knows"

1946

Medium: Pen and Ink on Illustration Board Signature: Signed Lower Right This piece is on 15.00" x 20.00" illustration board, with an image that measures to 11.50" x 14.00." Some soiling, editor's notations. Drawing by George Wachsteter (1911-2004) for 1947 Broadway show `Man and Superman` by George Bernard Shaw, starring Maurice Evans...

Medium: Pen and Ink on Illustration Board Signature: Signed Lower Right Caricature by George Wachsteter (1911-2004) for 1949 Broadway production of `The Happiest Years`, starring Douglas Watson, Peggy...

Medium: Pen and Ink on Illustration Board Signature: Signed Lower Left Drawing by George Wachsteter (1911-2004) for 1948 Broadway show `Me and Molly` by Gertrude Berg, based on her radio show `The Goldbergs`, but set in the year 1919. Berg appears first on left. The other actors (l to r) are Joan Lazer as daughter Rosalie, Eli Mintz as Uncle David (also on radio & TV), David Opatoshu as Mr. Mendel, Margaret Feury as Vera, Philip Loeb as husband Jake (also on radio & TV) & Lester Carr as son Sammy. Directed by Ezra Stone, designed by Harry Horner...

Medium: Pen and Ink on Illustration Board Signature: Signed Upper Right Drawing by George Wachsteter (1911-2004), Broadway cast of `Kathleen` by Michael Sayers, staged by Coby Ruski...

"At Home Abroad" 1935 Broadway Play NY Times Published Illustration 20th Century Al Hirschfeld (1903 - 2003) At Home Abroad 9 1/2 x 17 inches (sight) Ink on board Signed upper right...

"Animated Discourse" WPA Mid-Century American Scene Modernism Realism Figurative. Chris Ritter (American, 1906 – 1976) "Animated Discourse," 19 x 24 (sight). Watercolor on paper. Si...

Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Showgirls Cartoon for Life Magazine, 1934. Ink, watercolor and gouache on heavy illustration paper, matting window measures 16.5 x 13 inches; sheet measures 19 x 15 inches; Matting panel measures 20 x 23 inches. Signed lower right. Very good condition with discoloration and toning in margins. Unframed. Provenance: Ethel Maud Mott Herman, artist (1883-1984), West Orange NJ. For two decades, she drew almost 600 cartoons for The New Yorker with female characters that commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony. In the mid-1920s, Harold Ross, the founder of a new magazine called The New Yorker, was looking for cartoonists who could create sardonic, highbrow illustrations accompanied by witty captions that would function as social critiques. He found that talent in Barbara Shermund. For about two decades, until the 1940s, Shermund helped Ross and his first art editor, Rea Irvin, realize their vision by contributing almost 600 cartoons and sassy captions with a fresh, feminist voice. Her cartoons commented on life with wit, intelligence and irony, using female characters who critiqued the patriarchy and celebrated speakeasies, cafes, spunky women and leisure. They spoke directly to flapper women of the era who defied convention with a new sense of political, social and economic independence. “Shermund’s women spoke their minds about sex, marriage and society; smoked cigarettes and drank; and poked fun at everything in an era when it was not common to see young women doing so,” Caitlin A. McGurk wrote in 2020 for the Art Students League. In one Shermund cartoon, published in The New Yorker in 1928, two forlorn women sit and chat on couches. “Yeah,” one says, “I guess the best thing to do is to just get married and forget about love.” “While for many, the idea of a New Yorker cartoon conjures a highbrow, dry non sequitur — often more alienating than familiar — Shermund’s cartoons are the antithesis,” wrote McGurk, who is an associate curator and assistant professor at Ohio State University’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. “They are about human nature, relationships, youth and age.” (McGurk is writing a book about Shermund. And yet by the 1940s and ’50s, as America’s postwar focus shifted to domestic life, Shermund’s feminist voice and cool critique of society fell out of vogue. Her last cartoon appeared in The New Yorker in 1944, and much of her life and career after that remains unclear. No major newspaper wrote about her death in 1978 — The New York Times was on strike then, along with The Daily News and The New York Post — and her ashes sat in a New Jersey funeral home...

JOHN DRONSFIELD (1900-1951) The Duet Watercolour and pencil Unframed, in mount only 32.5 by 26 cm., 12 ¾ by 10 ¼ in. (mount size 45.5 by 39 cm., 18 by 15 ¼ in.) John Marsden Dron...