Jun 04, 2019 - Sale 2511

Sale 2511 - Lot 188

Price Realized: $ 8,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 7,000 - $ 10,000
EDWARD GOREY.
Flappers and Topiary. Proposed cover for The New Yorker, published as a memorial Postscript, May 8, 2000, with their stamp dated 1993 on verso. Watercolor, pen and ink on paper, 279x216 mm; 11x8 1/2 inches, on 14x11-inch paper. Initialed in lower right image. Cornered to foam board, matted, and framed. Provenance: Gorey's agent, John Locke, to present owner, 1997.
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When Tina Brown, the New Yorker's then new editor, reached out to Gorey in 1992 for submissions, it was believed that he offered her only two pieces of cover art. The first appeared on that year's December 21st Christmas week cover. The second drawing of two cats nestled and camouflaged in a giant floral bedspread languished in their archives until the magazine's art editor, Françoise Mouly, rediscovered a copy of it this past autumn. Informally titled "Cat Fancy," it was published on the cover of the December 10, 2018 issue; the original artwork for it is being sold as lot 187 in this auction. However, a third cover was also submitted, as evidenced by the ubiquitous New Yorker vertical spine bar and the magazine's dated stamp on the verso. Rather than using it for a cover, The New Yorker honored Gorey in memoriam by printing this charming watercolor of his classic flapper girl and lively animal topiary in a quartet of vignettes as a Postscript upon his death in 2000.