Sep 28, 2023 - Sale 2646

Sale 2646 - Lot 248

Unsold
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(PRESIDENTS--1944 CAMPAIGN.) C.D. Batchelor, artist. Original anti-Roosevelt drawing, "Democratic Ticket: All This, and Truman Too." Pencil and ink illustration, 20 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches; hinged to original mat on top edge verso; signed by the artist and additional inscribed "For Mrs. Alice Longworth with the admiration and cordial good wishes of this cartoonist, G.E.B. 1944." [New York], 1944
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Additional Details

The artist Clarence Daniel Batchelor (1988-1977) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for 38 years with the New York Daily News, at that time a right-leaning newspaper. This drawing consists of rather unflattering portraits of Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, with a small caricature of Vice President Truman inset below. The drawing was originally published in the Daily News of 27 September 1944, page 9C.

Within a few days of publication, the drawing was inscribed by the artist to Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980). She was the daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, first cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt, and a prominent Republican critic of the Franklin Roosevelt administration. The Kansas City Star ran a blurb on the drawing in its 8 October 1944 issue: "Mrs. Alice Roosevelt Longworth has the original New York Daily News cartoon showing large caricatures of the President and Mrs. Roosevelt with a tiny picture at the bottom of the cartoon of Truman. . . . Mrs. Longworth is having it framed for her drawing room." The cartoon's prominence in her home is discussed in Carol Felsenthal's 2003 biography of Longworth, "Princess Alice: The Life and Times of Alice Roosevelt Longworth," page 253.

Provenance: purchased by the consignor at a 1989 Vassar College fundraising event in Washington.