Mary Petty, the Mysterious Cover Artist Who Captured the Decline of the Rich

"In addition to publishing two hundred and nineteen cartoons, Petty 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 Times described them, in Petty's obituary, as "drawings of bloodless patricians frozen in the prewar world of croquet." They're much more. Petty's cartoons are undeniably funny, couched in a dourness"

"Petty (1899-1976) was married to one such man, Alan Dunn, who published close to two thousand cartoons in The New Yorker. They spent nearly all their life together in a small ground-floor apartment at 12 East Eighty-eighth Street, Dunn working at a drawing table in the living area and Petty at a small board in their bedroom. Petty-who had attended high school at Horace Mann, in the Bronx-had no formal art training, and she was sometimes referred to by Dunn, perhaps jokingly, as his "student.""

Mary Petty combined reclusiveness and uncompromising vision to portray a fading Edwardian world with warmth and brilliance. She worked without formal art training and lived with fellow cartoonist Alan Dunn in a modest ground-floor apartment, producing drawings from a small bedroom board. Petty published two hundred and nineteen cartoons and painted thirty-eight vividly colored, meticulously composed New Yorker covers. The covers blend flawless composition, rich detail, and human observation, transforming gags into intricate watercolors that evoke brocaded wallpaper, finely tiled kitchens, and the intimate interiors of a bygone patrician era.

Read at The New Yorker