Magnaverde has kindly offered to scan in some of his New Yorker covers with Mary Petty's illustrations on them and send them to me for posting. I have also told Soodie that I will send her scans of the Goodbye illustrations, but I will also post them here. If you have anything to include, pass it along, and I will add it! It looks like we'll be doing Mary Petty for the next day or so!
When the Peak of Chic interviewed Nick Harvill about his favourite books, he mentioned the classic Goodbye Mr. Chippendale by T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings, and illustrated by Mary Petty. 
I had found this book at Book Thing a while ago, and had even written a post or two about it.
When the Peak of Chic interviewed Nick Harvill about his favourite books, he mentioned the classic Goodbye Mr. Chippendale by T.H. Robsjohn Gibbings, and illustrated by Mary Petty. I had found this book at Book Thing a while ago, and had even written a post or two about it.
I know about Robsjohn-Gibbings, but I didn't know anything about Mary Petty. Apparently, she had quite a career as an illustrator, having nearly 40 New Yorker covers to her credit. She and cartoonist Charles Addams were the two favourite cartoonists of then New Yorker publisher Harold Ross.
Her character, Fay, the Victorian-era maid shown on the cover of Goodbye Mr. Chippendale, also appears on a number of the New Yorker covers. In the 39 years that she illustrated for them, the world was transitioning from the Victorians to the mid-century moderns, and she worked to capture these changes which were difficult for many. Her detailed pen and ink drawings were perfect for Goodbye Mr. Chippendale with all of his disdain for the Victorian style.
Mary Petty was married to Alan Dunn, a cartoonist with more than 1900 published in the New Yorker. She died in 1975 as a result of a mugging several years earlier.
Oh My GOD ! I am so taken with the illustrations of Mary Petty! I didn't know a thing about her until your post. I have to see more. I am truly just .... thunderstruck.
ReplyDeleteMary Petty's wonderful covers were my favorites too, for the same reason that I liked Charles Addam's cartoons: not for their humor--on one hand, the pragmatic, know-it-all maid vs. the fey, etoliated family she allegedly worked for, and on the other, the definitely abnormal family groups, the doomed scientists, the hapless parents of three-headed babies, the cool-as-a cucumber suburban murderesses--but the evocative Victorian settings that served as backgrounds for the witty tableaux in the foreground: a carpenter Gothic summer house in the off season, with its Belter furniture shrouded under faded dustcovers; an abandoned conservatory; a dusty cellar with a sleeping giant of a multi-armed coal furnace; a butler's pantry filled with to the ceiling with silver serving pieces that haven't been used in decades;a whole lost world of once-grand estates either stubbornly clinging to life or quietly, incrementally slipping away as their neighborhoods are assailed by an army of pastel-clad suburbanites.
ReplyDeleteThe glossy magazines of the 195Os & 196Os, when, occasionally, they featured a Victorian house, invariably showed them brightly lit & freshly varnished, but it was the half-haunted servants' bedrooms & faded Turkish smoking parlors in Petty & Addams' watercolors that cast a moody spell over me then, and that still do the same thing today. I must have a thousand New Yorker covers going back clear to the 193Os, with a few dozen covers or so by each of these wonderful artists, and sometimes, when I'm sick with the flu, I'll spend a whole day lying in bed & looking at them all. For me, entering that vanished world for an afternoon--a world almost gone already when these covers were first drawn--is almost as therapeutic as a real vacation. Thanks for reminding me.
I like learning new things too - these illustrations are wonderful. Thank you for the great post. xv
ReplyDeleteMeg, how wonderful and enlightneing. A woman before her time, as most illutrators of that era were men.
ReplyDeleteMagnaverde... fans would be delighted if you'd scan and post some of your favourite covers.
ReplyDeleteI, too, am a HUGE fan of Charles Addams and also Peter Arno. My father had books of their cartoons and I'd delight in finding the little bits in them. I am now wondering if he also had Mary Petty's book, This Petty Place...
BTW, the title of that last Petty drawing--and the R-G comment that inspired it--comes straight off page 265 of the 1947 edition of House & Garden's Complete Guide to Interior Decoration, the very book that first spurred my interest in design & decorating back when I was a kid. Everything is connected.
ReplyDeletewow i love mary petty's illustrations--i am so charmed by them--thank you for showing us
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of this. those illustrations are incredible. I'm off to track this down (along with everyone else)
ReplyDeleteI love learning new things too, especially about Mary Petty. It's terrible to admit, but I have "Goodbye Mr. C" and have not read it! But, you can be sure that I did look at Petty's illustrations. So charming.
ReplyDeleteI love learning new things too and you always oblige for me.
ReplyDeletethanks!
I guess I've seen a few of these but never knew what I was looking at. Wonderful to learn more, and Magnaverde ... WOW.
ReplyDelete