In spite of the fact that I’ve featured him twice just in the past two weeks, I’ll continue my tradition of ringing out the old year and bringing in the new with a couple of New Year’s babies from J.C. Leyendecker, the American illustrator who started the practice of representing the new year as a baby (or, initially in his case, as a winged cherub) on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post.
I don’t have an enlargement of the New Year 1911 SEP cover (December 1910, above, top left), in which the baby new year greets not the old year, but Father Time.
However, courtesy of Scott Anderson and his generous post here, we have a nice set of images of the original art from Leyendecker’s SEP cover ushering in 1926 (a year in which tax laws were changed and some tax rates reduced).
Another good excuse to display more of Leyendecker’s bravura brushwork.
Here is the Saturday Evening Post’s collection of their Leyendecker baby covers, and page 2.
For more on Leyendecker starting the tradition of representing the new year as a baby, see my post from 2006. I’ve listed links to my other Leyendecker posts, many of which have additional links and resources, below.
I hope you all have a terrific new year, filled with great art, old and new!
-Charley