Notre-Dame with Tourists
New York: 1966. Mixed media with gouache, watercolor, ink, and collage on paper, measuring 20 x 16 inches, signed in image, lower left. Some light age toning, tape remnants or ghosts of removal along edges, outside of visual field and crop marks.
Penultimate study by Anatol Kovarsky for the August 13, 1966 cover of The New Yorker. With over three hundred cartoons and nearly fifty covers, Kovarsky was one of the magazine’s most prolific artists. He was a master of perspective who delighted in repeating shapes to create graphic patterns. These effects were exaggerated by his preference for depicting scenes from high angles, as in this view of Notre-Dame, where we see the imposing sculptural figures on its monochromatic façade playing against the line of brightly colored buses and tourists. From his days as a student at the École des Beaux Arts, to his time as a cartoonist during the liberation of the city, Kovarsky would always hold Paris dear. Though this composition differs from the one ultimately created for the New Yorker’s cover, it displays Kovarsky’s dedication to process and the fullest expression of his initial concept. The final published work is in the permanent collection of The Morgan Library. A wonderful example of Kovarsky’s New Yorker artwork, and a visual tribute to Paris’s great Gothic cathedral, set to reopen to visitors next year.
Price: $4,000.00