The New Yorker magazine was first published by Harold Ross and Jane Grant in February
1925.
And although he was never officially given the title they employed Rea Irvin as their
art editor, and his image of the character Eustace Tilly, who would become the magazine's
mascot, appeared on the cover of the first edition.
Irvin had previously been the art editor at the humour magazine Life, and was known for
his own modernist comedic approach to illustration.
And this was naturally enough reflected in the images he both produced and commissioned
for the covers of the New Yorker
Hungarian born Ilonka Karasz was among the earliest that Irvin chose to create cover
illustration, and her stylistic approach was a highly decorative blend of modernism and
folk art, and featured a distinctive disregard for accurate representational drawing.
Coincidentally, Irvin's second most popular choice in the first year of publication was
another Hungarian emigré, Julian De Miskey. His style resonated more clearly with the
same playful modernism as Irvin's own, and characters and environments were treated as
purely graphic shapes and flat colours. Both these illustrators helped to make the new
magazine stand out from the less radical opposition at the news stands.
The same was true of Barbara Shermund, whose cover work at this stage at least, also conformed
to the modernist principles which were very much encouraged by Irvin.
German born illustrator H. O. Hofman was equally committed to geometry and graphic minimalism
and was arguably the most stylistically extreme of the group at this point.
And although, like Barbara Shermund, the stylistic approach of Garrett Price would quickly evolve
out of all recognition, at this time he too created covers using clean line work and vibrant
limited colour.
Some of the illustrators who appeared in the first year of publication, such as Danish
designer Max Rée had only a brief association with the New Yorker.
But all those already mentioned would be around for considerably longer, and so would
Stanley Reynolds, who first appeared in 1926. He had a very good run with his portrayals
of languid male and female characters, using a style which was heavily influenced by the
fashion illustrations being produced in 1920's Paris.
In the same year he was joined by he always frivolous, if radically angular work of Armenian
born illustrator Constantin Aladjalov and the similarly inclined Ukrainian immigrant
Vladimir Bobritsky, both of whom were graphically exploring the fractured structural approaches
of European art movements such as cubism and futurism, but with considerably more humour.
Within a couple of years of first being published the New Yorker had gained a strong reputation
for the high standards of the visual content created by this group of mostly European illustrators.
Of course there continued to be a fairly large number of covers produced by Irvin himself,
and by this point it could be said that The New Yorker's covers had become an effective
gallery of upbeat imaginative imagery produced in a collective modernist or deco house style.
But early in 1927 the more gestural loose line and wash work of Peter Arno began to
appear on the cover and not much later the similarly loose pen and ink drawings of Helen
Hokinson also appeared. Both had been creating jokes for the pages of the magazine pretty
much since it began, but in the later years of the decade they also featured with increasing
frequency on the covers, and their more gestural and informal styling was noticeably distant
from the more formal precision of the other early contributors.
But although the inclusion of Arno and Hokinson definitely made the covers more varied it
was largely business as usual in stylistic terms with more from Irvin himself and the
majority of others with similar stylistic inclinations. And they were joined around
this time by Leonard Dove, whose style was at the time strikingly similar to Irvin's
own.
And in the last years of the 1920s the group were joined by Theodore Haupt, who was arguably
the most resolutely geometric, and modernist of the stable of contributors. His radically
styled compositions were dominant into the early 1930s but not much later he began to
have success as an artist and that was the last the last the New Yorker or any other
commercial enterprise ever saw of him.
By the early 1930s it seems that several of the old guard including De Miskey and Alajalov,
who had also by this point mysteriously lost the 'd' in his surname, had become noticeably
less formal in their illustrations, with manifestly freehand elements and textures creeping into
their engagingly playful work .
Whether this was at least in part the consequence of the continued presence and influence of
Hokinson and Arno is up for debate, but all the new recruits in the early 1930s were considerably
looser in their line work and more painterly application of colour.
William Steig began to feature regularly at this time, and he certainly owed something
to the style of Peter Arno. His goodnatured humorous images, created with bold brush line
work and subdued colour washes were barely recognisable as the work of the same man who
would later create the children's book Shrek.
Perry Barlow's drawings bore more than a passing resemblance to Helen Hokinson's pen and wash
technique and taste for whimsical, status-driven subject matter.
And similarly Richard Decker also created amusing light watercolours which nodded towards
the style and humour of Hokinson.
Abner Dean also made his debut on the cover in 1933, but his appearance was relatively
brief and in his later work in the books he produced became increasingly psychological
and dark, qualities only suggested in his covers at this stage.
Although hardly a newcomer as he had been with the New Yorker since 1925, Garrett Price
created several covers at this time and by now his previously graphic flat technique
had evolved into a spectacularly dissimilar loose pen and wash style.
And the same was true of fellow long term contributor Barbara Shermund, now displaying
not only a sharp talent for social humour, but also a sketchy ink line and wash technique
a considerable way distant from her early covers.
Of the newer talents perhaps the most distinctive was Harry Brown, whose work was frequently
to be found on the covers at tis time. There were some echoes of both Aladjalov and Karasz
evident in his illustration, but his playful and always visually absorbing scenarios featured
a pleasingly diverse approach to his choice of media and application.
Leonard Dove, who had first appeared a decade earlier with a style close to Irvin's own,
was yet another who had also undergone an organic transformation along the same lines
as that of other longstanding contributors.
So by the mid 30s the graphic tone of the covers had evolved considerably in the space
of a decade, not only reflecting but to an extent actually being a driving force in this
move away from more formal image creation.
And other than the covers still being created by Irvin himself Ilonka Karasz was one of
very few whose stylistic approach had not been significantly transformed by the passage
of time and changes in fashion.
In the later 1930s there continued to be an apparently endless supply of younger talent
waiting for their chance to shine, and among them was William Cotton, who favoured a naive
painted approach which featured virtually no line work, and Richard Taylor, whose distinctive
cartoon styling and subtle humour would endure for quite a few more years.
In 1939 after 15 years in the role Rea Irvin bowed out as art editor, even though in all
that time it had never been his official job title.
Even forgetting that his role had also extended to the content of the magazine's pages, there
had been around 780 covers produced in that time, quite a few by the man himself.
And he continued to contribute to the magazine as an illustrator of enduring popularity until
his eventual retirement in 1958 when he was 75 years old.
As I write this in 2023 the New Yorker is still published and despite the almost total
dominance of photography in contemporary magazine publishing I'm glad to say its covers continue
to be imaginatively illustrated.
But Rea Irvin's early contribution both as a creator and commissioner to the modernisation
of 20th century American illustration should never be underestimated and I think it's doubtful
we'll see another anytime soon who might equal the significance of that contribution.