By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

In the mid-1920s, when Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant began to imagine a magazine that would capture the erudite sophistication, humor and literary wit of New York City, they sought out writers and artists at a time when the island of Manhattan was the cultural capital of the universe.

They called the magazine The New Yorker.

They found the writers Dorothy Parker, E.B. White and James Thurber, hired cartoonists Peter Arno, Saul Steinberg and Whitney Darrow, Jr., and in June of 1925, the magazine debuted the work of Barbara Shermund on the magazine’s cover. From 1925 until 1944, over 600 of Shermund’s cartoons were published in the magazine, including nine cover illustrations. 

Her images illuminated the rise of early feminism, and her characters – mostly female – freely spoke their minds against the grain of the proper decorum of the time.

Beginning on Feb. 15 and extending through June 1, visitors to the Brandywine Museum of Art will get to step inside the party parlors, restaurants and conversations reflected in Shermund’s work with a new exhibit, Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund.

“Barbara Shermund had guts and she had moxie, and she was a person who seemed to come out into the world fully formed with knowledge of who she was and how she wanted to live,” said the exhibit’s curator Caitlin McGurk, who is an associate professor and Curator of Comics and Cartoon Art at The Ohio State University. “It was unbelievably rare for a woman to live the lifestyle she lived during her the eras that her life spanned, and to stick to her guns in the early days, especially with her strong and radical voice that came through in her cartoons.”

While her professional life was one of high recognition, Shermund’s life rose from early tragedy. Born an only child in 1899 in San Francisco, she and her family lived through the Great Earthquake that rocked the city in 1906, and in 1918, her mother died. In 1924, she moved across the country to New York City alone to make her way in the male-dominated editorial cartoon industry.

“Shermund had the great benefit of getting in the door of the New Yorker right away,” McGurk said. “Thankfully, there were many women who were working behind the scenes at the magazine who helped pioneer Shermund’s early voice. Jane Grant worked full time as a journalist with the New York Times to literally bankroll the magazine when it was first getting started and created the vision for the magazine with Ross, and her vision was profound.

“Thanks to Grant and Ross’ vision, Shermund was given opportunities to put work out there that were unlike anything people had ever seen before in nationally distributed magazines.”

Throughout her career, Shermund was an unheralded early master of gag cartooning, which remains insightful, witty and relevant to audiences of today. In Liza Donnelly’s book Funny Ladies, she writes, “What comes through in many of the cartoons is that Shermund’s women did not need men.”

In addition to her work at The New Yorker, Shermund became a mainstay at Esquire, contributed to Life and Collier’s, had her syndicated newspaper cartoon “Shermund’s Sallies,” a syndicated cartoon for Pictorial Review and illustrated a variety of books and advertisements. In 1950, she was among the first three women to be accepted as a member of the male-dominated National Cartoonist Society. 

“The National Cartoonist Society had always been male only, and in 1949, Shermund and her female colleagues were fed up with this and penned a scathing and hilarious letter demanding that the Society either change their name to the National Men’s Cartoonist Society or allow women admission. It went back and forth for a year and eventually Shermund, Hilda Terry and Edwina Dumm were finally allowed in.

“The Society now has many women and a female president. That would not have happened if not for Shermund and her contemporaries who really pushed for women’s visibility in the field.”

McGurk said female cartooning pioneers like Shermund are the precursors of an industry that has expanded from newspapers, comic books and magazines to what has become a global network of communication.

“These cartoonists – which includes women and trans and non-binary artists – have always been there, but their means of delivery has changed,” she said. “Now, they’re placing their work on social media platforms, web comics and DIY publications. Graphic novels are bigger than ever, and there are also a lot of fantastic women putting out really profound and personal work.”

The exhibition is organized by the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at The Ohio State University.

Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund will premiere on Feb. 15 at the Brandywine Museum of Art’s Strawbridge Family Gallery and run through June 1. The Museum is located at 1 Hoffman’s Mill Road, Chadds Ford, Pa. 19317. To learn more, visit www.brandywine.org.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].