Fourteen original illustrations for The Big Book of Real Boats and Ships
No place: circa 1951. Fourteen opaque watercolors, images measuring approximately 10 x 19 inches on boards measuring 14.5 x 20 inches, signed “Zaffo” in lower images. All images horizontal except cover image, measuring 16 x 11 inches. Dampstain to upper corner of submarine illustration; scattered notes, captions, and registration tape in lower margins. Paper protective overleaves taped to top of boards. With: publisher’s proof sheets and copy of the published book.
Suite of original watercolors by prolific children’s illustrator George J. Zaffo (1916-1984) for The Big Book of Real Boats and Ships, a New York Herald Tribune Children’s Spring Book Festival Honor Book, published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1951. The group includes Zaffo’s cover image of the S.S. America, the title-page spread of a beaming lighthouse, and seven double-page spreads of a Coast Guard cutter, a tugboat, a submarine, a cargo vessel, an ocean liner, a fireboat, and an aircraft carrier. Five watercolors feature multiple images: “Boats and Ships That Made History,” “Small Craft / Odd Craft,” a spread of onboard signals (whistle, bell, telegraph, code flags), “Salty Talk” (sailing terminology), and “Light Signals” (boat-to-boat communication.) One published image is missing from the suite: the watercolor for “Sailboats,” a gift from Zaffo to his local yacht club shortly after publication. The color proof for that image remains with the others included here. Known for his meticulous attention to technical detail, Zaffo’s popular picture books introduced generations of American children to the mechanics of transportation. Before opening his own studio, he worked as a tracer for Norman Rockwell, and as an animator at Terrytoons and the U.S. Army Signal Corps. By 1960, his picture books could be found in nearly every school library across the country, spurred by Jacqueline Kennedy’s selection of Your Freight Trains (1958) and The Giant Nursery Book of Things That Go (1959) for the White House Library. In 1969, the New York Times observed that “his outsized drawings - straightforward and eye-filling - have mesmerized small children,” and suggested that his latest work, The Giant Book of Things in Space, “may well prove to be the nursery set’s ‘2001.’” A vivid group of original watercolors from the artist’s estate.
Price: $9,500.00