The title of this cartoon is: "Clubs We Do Not Care to Join -- The Club for the Retired Sons of Indulgent Fathers." This is from a series of 6 titles the artist did on the theme of "Clubs we do not care to join." They were created for Life, a humor magazine of the day.

Rea Irvin was born in San Francisco and started his career in illustration as an unpaid cartoonist for The San Francisco Examiner. He moved to the East Coast in his twenties and quickly became a regular contributor to Life and Cosmopolitan magazines. In 1924 he joined a group that was helping to launch a new magazine called the New Yorker. He designed the inaugural cover and in so doing, created Eustace Tilley, the well dressed dandy with a monocle and a top hat. Tilley became his signature piece and he has appeared on the magazine's cover every year (with one exception) since then.

As the magazines first art editor, Irvin created a style that continues to define the publication to this day; witty, urbane, and socially and culturally aware. Irvin's work appeared on 169 covers of The New Yorker between 1925 and 1958. He also supplied hundreds of illustrations between the covers. As the art editor, he contributed significantly to The New Yorker's layout and design. and he created the magazine's sharp and casually elegant type style, which is still known as "Irvin type."

His work was so original that art and literary critics have remarked that Rea Irvin's drawings verged on the revolutionary and have inspired imitators since his first cover.

Medium : 1 drawing : ink and graphite with colored pencil

Created/Published : March 24, 1914

Creator : Rea Irvin, artist, 1881-1972

Forms part of the Art Wood Collection of Caricature and Cartoon housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: ppmsca04665