J. R. Burgess

'Three Jolly Cadets' Story Illustration

Medium: Watercolor on Paper Signature: Signed Lower Right

Story illustration for “The Land of Heart’s Desire” by Myra Kelly for McClure’s Magazine, published July 1904, illustrated page 244. The full caption reads: "Words ensued which were...

Illustration to accompany the article “Adventures in Growing Older: Being the Last of a Series of Adventures in Living” by Helen Ring Robinson for Life magazine, published 1915. Hele...

Illustration for third and final installment of "River Singer" by Pete Martin for The Saturday Evening Post, published August 30, 1947, page 26. The full caption reads: “Katie’s br...

Cartoon sketch, ca. 1955. Pencil on paper, sheet measures 8.5 x 11 inches. Unsigned with editor's notations. From a group of sketches meant to be preliminary drafts for editor appro...

FRANK WATKINS (1863-1929) The Boat Builder Giant Pen and ink, unframed, in conservation mount only 20.5 by 29.5 cm., 8 by 11 ¾ in. (frame size 36.5 by 45 cm., 14 ½ by 17 ¾ in.) Frank Henry Watkins was born in Lambeth, London and was the son of a bank clerk. He worked as a children’s book and comic illustrator in the early 20th century, drawing for many children’s stories including Dolly Twoshoes (1901); The Wonder and Dolly Daydream (1902); Illustrated Chips and Dick and Daisy (1919-1921) and also for Merry Moments. He provided book illustrations for The Man From the Moon by Philip Carmichael (1909); The Sun’s Babies by Edith Howes (1910); The King Who Never Died: Tales of King Arthur by Dorothy Senior (1910) and Fairy Rings...

"Not True, Good Accounts Make Good Friends" Satirical French Illustration Comical illustration by Gaston Hoffmann (French, 1883-1977) titled "Ce n'est pas vrai, les bons comptes fon...

Barbara Shermund (1899-1978). Society Satirical Cartoon, ca. 1940s. Gouache on heavy illustration paper, image measures 17 x 14 inches; 23 x 20 inches in matting. Signed lower left. Very good condition but matting panel should be replaced. 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...