The cartoon, depicting two jungle missionaries in front of a dancing witch doctor, who evidently has shrunk one to the size of a doll, is among the nearly 300 lots in the first session, beginning at 6 p.m. next Friday at the gallery at 463 E. Lancaster Ave. One of 100 lots from a Dodge family descendant, it has a presale price estimate of $2,000 to $3,000, according to the auction catalog (also accessible online at www.pookandpook.com). It will be familiar to New Yorker magazine readers of a certain age, but lacks the caption it presumably had in print.
The cartoon is one of several pieces of illustration art in the session. Two oil-on-canvases by Frank E. Schoonover done in 1915 for a story in Scribner's magazine are each expected to bring $5,000 to $10,000.
A commercial illustration of a hunting scene with two African Americans and a skunk exiting a log, done by Irving R. Brown for Winchester Firearms Co. - and that would be socially unacceptable by today's standards - should bring $5,000 to $8,000.
Another, though not exactly an illustration, is an oil-on-panel by the contemporary George Rodrigue of a dog with yellow eyes, white nose, and blue fur in front of a group of seated men ($3,000 to $5,000). We think of blue dog as the term for conservative Southern Democrats, but Rodrigue created his blue dog for a book with that title about self-discovery that he and coauthor Lawrence Freundlich published in 1994.
Next Friday's session also will offer the Young foxhunting scene ($20,000 to $30,000) and several other important paintings. They include three Walter Baums, notably Snow Bound Brook ($10,000 to $15,000); five Chester County scenes by Barclay Rubincam, notably Building the Bridge, depicting the construction of a covered bridge on a rural creek ($8,000 to $12,000); and a cabin scene of an African American family by William Aiken Walker ($14,000 to $18,000).
