Next up in my series of short profiles of women cartoonists of The New Yorker is Barbara Shermund. She is my favorite artist from the 1920’s, in part because she was a groundbreaker. And so funny!
Shermund was born in San Francisco in 1899, and, following the death of her mother, she moved at an early age to New York city. She was classically trained at the California School of Fine Arts.
After arriving in the city, Shermund started drawing for The New Yorker in 1925, the year it was founded. Her contributions began as paintings for the covers and little spot drawings. Below is her first cover, only four months after the magazine was founded, smack dab in the middle of the Roaring Twenties. I love this cover because, it feels like a representation of women’s freedom. The woman is moving, her hair blowing in the wind; she is content.
When I say Shermund was a groundbreaker, it’s not because of any clear “first.” She was not the first woman, that first goes to Ethel Plummer, the first woman cartoonist in The New Yorker in 1925. Shermund was groundbreaking in what she drew and wrote about and how she did it. She gave us a peek into what life was like for a modern, feminist woman in NYC in the 1920’s. Her cartoons are sassy, intelligent, subversive, and she teases men like no one had before.
Here is a great mansplaning drawing.
Shermund pokes fun at the institution of marriage in many of her drawings.
As we look at and read Shermund’s cartoons, it’s almost as we are evesdropping on women’s conversations. Women have always been funny in private; but until recent history, we didn’t share it —some would say we weren’t allowed to! Shermund was showing us how funny women could be, but for a mixed readership at The New Yorker.
Shermund wrote all her own ideas, and her breezy and loose drawing style reflects her tone. I feel like her art and her words dance together beautifully.
Shermund was unafraid to be cutting!
A modern woman, she even had a passport. Shermund loved to travel.
Shermund was incredibly prolific at The New Yorker, and worked for them from 1925 until the 1944. There are many factors that could enter into why she left the magazine; I have no concrete proof. My thoughts are perhaps her voice was not as popular with the editors as it once was (there was a new cartoon editor in 1939); in addition, post-war American culture was changing, becoming more conservative. Humor had become men’s domain, and in general was becoming more sexist.
I wrote a profile of Shermund for The New Yorker in 2019.
Thanks for being here, as always! I love this community. Have a great Thursday, see you tomorrow.
If you would like to help us complete our film, we still need to reach our kickstarter goal in the one week we have left! Almost there! Extremely grateful to many of you who have already helped with contributions.
Liza, another wonderful example of a woman ahead of her time. We need women's voices and visions today as we did in the 1920s. You are one of the few who provide the humor in these trying times.
This documentary is going to be amazing.