As I’ve done every New Year’s Eve for the past 17 years, I’ll wish Lines and Colors readers a Happy New Year with one of J. C. Leyendecer’s New Year’s covers for the Saturday Evening Post, in this case marking the arrival of 1923.
American illustrator J.C. Leyendecker first represented the new year as a baby (or occasionally a cherub) on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post for the New Year’s in 1906. Over the thirty odd years following, his New Year’s covers made the idea into one of our cultural icons.
The covers were themed in keeping with major events likely to impact the coming year. In this case — as far as I can determine from the figure draped with a banner representing Europe, with a treaty in his back pocket — marking the impending signing of the The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the last major peace treaty at the end of WWI.
I wish you all a bounty of artistic delights and inspiration, whether found in the existing art of the past and present, or in the creation of new art in the coming year!
