The Pretty Work of Mary Petty

    

   The New Yorker has been celebrating its centenary year for most of this year and the single issue for Sept. 1&8 comes with two covers. Inside there is a short piece about Mary Petty who "contributed a series of thirty-eight vividly colored, magnificently detailed, and flawlessly composed covers, which, at least in this New Yorker cover artist's opinion, have never been surpassed in their complexity, their richness, and, most of all, their humanity." The author adds, "they're brilliant watercolors of exquisite construction, set pieces with the charm and detail of a doll's house." Petty also published over 200 cartoons in The New Yorker.
   The author of the article about Perry and the covers she produced notes in the first sentence that "In the pantheon of New Yorker artists, the name Mary Petty hardly registers." Given that she is relatively unknown and given the beauty of her work (which should not be judged by my poor photo above), I thought it worth calling your attention to her.
   During almost 40 years as a contributor to the magazine, she produced 273 drawings and 38 pen-and-watercolor covers. A collection of her drawings is found in This Pretty Pace which, a reviewer notes, we should all have a look at if we are interested in "sheer perfection." The book also includes an essay by James Thurber, "Mary Petty and Her Drawings" and on the dust jacket, she is compared to Hogarth and Daumier. Harold Ross, The New Yorker publisher gave her cartoons his highest rating of "AAA" one "A" more than the cartoons of Thurber.
   Apart from producing covers and cartoons, she also provided illustrations for books by others. Her last cover for The New Yorker was on Mother's Day, May 19,1966. It is the one on the bottom right above and if the image was better you would see an older woman in an elegant room pulling a cord which breaks. 
   Apparently Petty quit abruptly when two of her cover submissions were rejected. She had lived a rather reclusive life with her husband, Alan Dunn, who also was a New Yorker cartoonist. It ended tragically. 
   "In early December, 1971 she disappeared, and was found by Dunn in a hospital, having been badly beaten in a violent assault. Permanently brain-damaged, she lived the remainder of her life in a nursing home, dying five years after the attack, alone." 

Sources: 
   I can assure you that a search for her art work is worth the effort. The article referred to above is: "The Mysterious Cover Artist Who Captured the Decline of the Rich: Mary Petty was Reclusive, Uncompromising, but She Peered into a Fading World With Unmatched Warmth and Brilliance, Chris Ware, The New Yorker, Aug. 25, 2025.
  The Wikipedia entry is helpful as usual. In it there is mention of the fact that she was assaulted, but I did not find any evidence of it in the New York papers. The American National Biography entry does provide additional information: 
  "Petty's career was tragically cut short when on 1 December 1971 she was assaulted and badly beaten by a mugger. She was found on Ward's Island three days afterward, bruised and incoherent, and never wholly recovered. She died five years later at the Pine Rest Nursing Home in Paramus, New Jersey."
  The book review of This Pretty Pace is here: "The Art of Mary Petty", Russell Maloney, NYT, Nov. 11, 1945. Her obituary: "Mary Petty, Cartoonist, Dead; Chided Wealthy in New Yorker," Barbara Campbell, NYT, Mar. 11, 1976,
   A major source is found at Syracuse University. See: "The Alan Dunn and Mary Petty Papers", which provides additional biographical information. 

CANCON: 
 For New Yorker covers by a Canadian see: "Bruce McCall RIP-1935-2023".
 Another Canadian, Barry Blitt, has done some, and here you will find a couple that depict two recent American presidents: "A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words."