Miguel Covarrubias (1904 - 1957)

Nettie King, New York
Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art, New York
Private Collection, San Francisco

Walter Davenport, "The Little Republicans Talk Back", Collier's, June 18, 1949, p. 28, illustrated in color

The medium is stable overall and the colors are vibrant. Smudges are present on the extreme edges of the paper. There is slight loss to the corners. A minor vertical crease/ripple down the center of the paper. Overall, the work is in excellent condition.
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Miguel Covarrubias is recognized as one of the most creative Mexican artists, a true renaissance man because of his enormous range of interests, his many accomplishments and the varied and impressive body of work he left behind.

He began his artistic career as a caricaturist.  Arriving in New York at the age of nineteen, his caricatures immediately away appeared in newspapers and in such fashionable magazines of the day as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. It didn't take long for Covarrubias to become acquainted with almost everyone of importance: famous names from the American intellectual, artistic, literary, entertainment, and political worlds; and he did marvelous caricatures of them all.

The caricature here appeared in the June 18, 1949 Collier’s Magazine in an article, The Little Republicans Talk Back. It depicts Hugh D. Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Party before and after the 1948 campaign for president. Scott helped the moderate Governor of New York, Thomas Dewey, obtain the nomination, but there were severe ideological splits with the far right and left. The in-fighting ultimately led to Scott’s resignation. Against all predictions, Harry S. Truman won the election in what became the greatest upset in the history of American presidential elections. The article in Collier’s begins “The worst fan mail in the world is pouring into the Washington headquarters of the Republican party. National Chairman Hugh D. Scott asked the rank and file what they had on their minds. What they had on their minds is just barely fit to print.”

This original gouache illustration, The Little Republicans Talk Back, belonged to Nettie King, close friend of Miguel Covarrubias and the wife of the writer, Alexander King. Nettie King was Covarrubias’ longtime agent within the magazine industry.

Adriana Williams, 2012.