Cooper Hewitt says...
Born 1903.
Lived and studied art in New York as a teenager.
Received his first art assignment at Samuel Goldwyn Studios.
Selznick Pictures By 1921, became art director.
Opened his own art studio, which ended in bankruptcy.
1925 Lived and worked in Paris for six months. Returned to New York, intending to have a career as a painter.
December 26, 1926 His sketch of the actor Sacha Guitry was published in the New York Herald Tribune. Within two years, five New York newspapers, including the New York Times, were publishing his theatrical drawings. However, he continued to produce paintings, lithographs and political cartoons.
1930s The Sunday Times began to reproduce his drawings of actors, directors and other theatre people, based on out of-town performances of plays he attended prior to Broadway openings.
1932 Published "Manhattan Oases", featuring New York bars and bartenders.
1940s Published "Harlem", a book of color lithographs, in a limited edition of 1,000.
Married Dolly Haas.
1945 To celebrate the birth of daughter Nina, he drew her name in the background of the theatrical drawing of that day for the play "Are You With It."
Continued to work Nina's name into his subsequent drawings; his readers would make a game of finding the Ninas. (In 1956, he began to append a numeral, following his signature,
indicating the number of Ninas in the drawing.)
"...[A]s the years progress, you see ...line simplify and the actual strokes elongate to where you actually become amazed at the complexity of that single, simple line. The mastery and beauty of that flowing trace of ink is regularly and stylistically contrasted with fine-line textures." (Unattributed quotation.)
1948 Illustrated S.J. Perelman's "Westward Ha!"
1949 Illustrated collection of S.J. Perelman's "New Yorker" pieces, "Listen to the Mockingbird"
1950 Illustrated S.J. Perelman's "The Swiss Family Perelman"
1986 Illustrated "And Did You Once See Sidney Plain?", a memoir of S.J. Perelman
1999 Published "Hirschfeld on Line", featuring works in color.
1996 Appeared in the documentary film of his life, "The Line King", directed by Susan Dryfoos.
Has done covers for Time, TV Guide and, in 1998, for Rolling Stone, a color image of Madonna.
Other publications: "Show Business is No Business" (1951); "The American Theatre" (1961);
"Hirschfeld by Hirschfeld" (1979).
As of 2002, he contnues his seventy year career with The Times.
Source: www.bpib.com/illustrat/hirschfe.htm
