Sale 2511 - Illustration Art, June 4, 2019

187 c EDWARD GOREY. “Cat Fancy.” Cover illustration for The New Yorker, published Dec 10, 2018, with their stamp, dated 1993, on verso. Watercolor, graphite, and ink on paper. 280x215 mm; 11x8 1 / 2 inches, on 13 1 / 2 x10 1 / 2 -inch paper. Initialed “EG” in lower right image. Cornered to archival matte and framed to 18 1 / 2 x15 1 / 2 inches. Provenance: Gotham Book Mart to present owner. [10,000/15,000] one of only two published new yorker covers by gorey . The first, featuring a family trimming a bizarre, leafless tree with poinsettia wrapping paper, appeared on the December 21, 1992 Christmas week cover. This second watercolor languished in their archives until just recently. In her December 3, 2018 Cover Story column “Edward Gorey’s ‘Cat Fancy,’” New Yorker art editor Françoise Mouly tells how she rediscovered the illustration this past autumn upon the submission of an appreciation of the illustrator by Joan Acocella which was occasioned by the recent biography of Gorey by Mark Dery (“Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey,” Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2018). The tight cross-hatching, detailed textile patterns, and presence of his favorite pets make this a quintessential Gorey artwork.