?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,500
JOHN HELD, JR. (1889-1958) "The Nest of Hornets." Probable calendar image, September, circa 1922. Opaque watercolor on board. 392x295 mm; 15 1/2x11 3/4 inches, on 18 1/2x12 1/2-inch board. Signed "John Held Jr." near lower center image. Taped to window matte; framed. Hard crease at lower left.
Provenance: American Illustrators Gallery, July 1992, with their label on verso of frame's backing board; thence to Dick McDonough.
Illustrated in The Most of John Held, Jr. by Marc Connelly (foreword) and Carl J. Weinhardt (introduction) (Brattleboro, VT: Stephen Greene Press, 1972, page 42), and again in America's Great Illustrators by Susan E. Meyer (New York: Galahad Books, 1978, page 295).
Arguably the most famous cartoonist and illustrator of "Jazz Age" America, Held produced a series of golf illustrations in the 1920s. Some of these were published in monthly commercial calendars with notes on golf instruction by famed professionals on the reverse. While the exact publisher and year are unknown, the illustration is speculated to have been for a calendar produced for Bryant Electric Company or Brown & Bigelow.
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![JOHN HELD, JR. (1889-1958) The Nest of Hornets. [CARTOONS / CALENDAR / GOLF]](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/thumb//\630\775630_view_02tn.jpg)