July 27 is the tenth anniversary of the death of gifted cartoonist Richard Thompson. His tragic death at age of 58 was a great loss to the field of illustration as well as a personal loss to the many friends and admirers who loved him dearly.
I always enjoyed Richard's sketch of presidential candidate and business executive H. Ross Perot, one of the very first in a line of plutocrats convinced that their business savvy qualified them to govern others. Richard drew this portrait for The New Yorker.
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| H. Ross Perot |
What a sharp, bold, confident piece of work!
If I've said unkind things about the quality of the drawing in The New Yorker in recent years, it's partly because Richard proved to me that these spot illustrations need not be boring and formulaic, that they could be fresh and insightful and creative additions to the text, even improving upon the text.
We miss you, Richard.
1 comment:
There is a compendium of 100 years of New Yorker cartoons. Over the first half the drawing is perhaps predictable but of unvaried solid competence. The drawers could draw, and it was expected of them. Then there enters style for the sake of style and things come unstuck. And by now the drawings of the New Yorker cartoons are at best mediocre and most of the time abysmal.
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