Eric Pape in
the New York Herald Tribune
Collected here are the 154 celebrity portraits drawn in lithographic crayon by Eric Pape and published in the New York Herald Tribune during the years of the Great Depression. These original drawings were discovered among the studio contents of the artist 60 years after his death.
These portraits paint a history of the notable politicians, writers, poets, artists, musicians, composers, business leaders, actors and actresses of their age. Many of these drawings, now restored to their original beauty, are currently held in museum collections worldwide.
Preface
During the last decade of his life Pape survived the economic deprivation of the Great Depression by producing 154 evocative personality portraits of prominent actors and actresses, politicians, scientists, writers and other celebrities in lithographic crayon. Newsprints of these drawings were published in the New York Herald Tribune Sunday editions starting in 1927 and continued until his death in 1938.
Many of the original portrait drawings from this series are now in museum collections around the world, including the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, The National Gallery in London, The Freud Museum in Vienna, Austria, the Museo Histórico Nacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina, The U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, The United States Supreme Court, The Ohio Statehouse Museum, Johns Hopkins University, The University of Texas, Princeton University, The Society of Illustrators in New York, the Annisquam Historical Society in Massachusetts, the Belasco Theater in New York, and Ten Chimneys Foundation in Wisconsin. The Players in Manhattan has one of the largest surviving collections of these drawings, which includes portraits of many noted early members of The Players.
The images of these original lithographic drawings and portraits for this edition are drawn from the collection of Eric Pape’s biographer, Dr. Gregory Conn. He collected over a hundred of these original lithographic drawings, having them repaired, restored, conserved and framed for museum display prior to donation to appropriate public institutions. In those cases where original drawings were unavailable, examples of the printed portraits from printer’s proofs recovered from the artist’s studio after his death are used. Images from the New York Herald Tribune are also included from the collection of Dr. Conn, supplemented with images from volumes preserved in the Duke University library in North Carolina.
