On April 17, Peter Arno's original 1944 New Yorker cartoon set at the skating rink of Rockefeller Center went on the auction block at Heritage. The Texas auction house, it should be noted, did not identify the drawing's date or its publication in The New Yorker. But the caption was right there. The drawing is unsigned but unmistakeably Arno.
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| "Why, it's Mrs. Courtney Richardson, Senior—she's heading this way!" Peter Arno Original art The New Yorker, February 12, 1944, p. 20 |
The rink at Rockefeller Center first opened on Christmas of 1936, roughly seven years before this drawing appeared. Its placement below street level makes it immediately recognizable then and now. Arno gives us the static observers above with a well-defined horizontal plane set apart from the strong verticals of Manhattan's buildings and the plaza. The stairs create a flow down to the area of action—no one is going up. The skaters have a flow of their own too as we see three of them making the turn and following the grooves on the ice.
The couple in the foreground on the left direct our attention to the right, their sharp noses—and skates—pointing to Mrs. Courtney Richardson, Senior. Her name and her figure are outsized and attract our attention. So do her dark clothes and her exaggerated angulation; her skates move perpendicular to the gentle curves on the ice that Arno has so carefully established. The sense of movement is achieved without the use of speed lines. The matter-of-fact caption does not prepare us for the madcap scene Arno creates.
Some sleight-of-hand took place before publication. The New Yorker published the drawing with a linear border that looks for all the world like a part of Arno's original. His signature was added as well. Possibly the signature and border together were part of a single overlay. It's a small detail, but the back lining of Mrs. Richardson's coat, which Arno left white, has been shaded.
Arno even took the time to paint the grain of the wood on the floorboards. Such details are largely or completely lost in publication.
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| "Why, it's Mrs. Courtney Richardson, Senior—she's heading this way!" Peter Arno Original art The New Yorker, February 12, 1944, p. 20 |
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| Peter Arno Heritage Auctions listing ended April 17, 2024 |
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| Peter Arno Heritage Auctions item description |
Some sleight-of-hand took place before publication. The New Yorker published the drawing with a linear border that looks for all the world like a part of Arno's original. His signature was added as well. Possibly the signature and border together were part of a single overlay. It's a small detail, but the back lining of Mrs. Richardson's coat, which Arno left white, has been shaded.
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| "Why, it's Mrs. Courtney Richardson, Senior—she's heading this way!" Peter Arno The New Yorker, February 12, 1944, p. 20 |
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| "Why, it's Mrs. Courtney Richardson, Senior—she's heading this way!" Peter Arno Original art The New Yorker, February 12, 1944, p. 20 |
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| Cartoons by Peter Arno and Garrett Price |
By the way, is Garrett Price's 1944 Valentine's Day drawing of a woodpecker a spot or a cartoon? I'd call it a cartoon. But it is not listed in The Complete Cartoons of The New Yorker, so the powers that be have a differing opinion. I might have to file an appeal.
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| Garrett Price The New Yorker, February 12, 1944, p. 21 |
Note: I suspect Arno may have used photo references for some of the skaters—no, not for Mrs. Richardson—as well as for the women on the stairs and perhaps the rink's architectural elements, but I have no way of proving this.
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