
Richard Merkin was a quintessential New Yorker whose paintings and illustrations celebrated America of the 1920s and 1930s. A socialite and self-proclaimed dandy, Merkin did almost three hundred illustrations for The New Yorker. He contributed to Harper’s and the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and from 1988 to 1991, he wrote a monthly column called “Merkin on Style” for Gentlemen’s Quarterly. The ineffable wit that kept him in demand as an illustrator emerges in Gertrude and George, in which a cat smoking a cigarette smiles from his perch beside a cocktail glass.
Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 2014
Modern American Realism: The Sara Roby Foundation Collection, 2014
- Title
-
Gertrude and George
- Artist
- Date
- 1979
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- sheet: 27 3⁄4 x 39 3⁄8 in. (70.5 x 100.0 cm)
- Copyright
-
© 1979, Richard Merkin
- Credit Line
-
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- pastel on paper
- Classifications
- Keywords
-
- Landscape – celestial – moon
- Animal – cat
- Landscape – time – night
- Figure group – male
- Fantasy
- Object Number
-
1985.30.45
- Palette
- Linked Open Data
- Linked Open Data URI