Pete got a bit of spending money by selling some of his precious product to Tom Dunke, the Sanford bootlegger.
Date1940
Artist
Amos Sewell
(American illustrator, 1901–1983)
Illustration Citation"A Present for Babe," by R. Ross Annett, in The Saturday Evening Post, August 31, 1940
MediumCharcoal on illustration board
Dimensions24 1/4 × 11 3/16 in. (61.6 × 28.4 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1988
Object number1988-138
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextThe Babe of the title is a six-year-old girl from a Depression-era poor farm family which has lost its middle-class status because of the Depression and drought. When she longingly admires a dress in a shop window, her sacrifices their own small savings to buy it for her. In this scene, Amos Sewell depicts a sub-plot in which the disreputable uncle prepares to meet a bootlegger with a bag from a local store which actually holds his liquor supply.A native Californian, Sewell kept his day job as a banker while studying art at night. By 1930, he earned his transport by working on a lumber-boat sailing from San Francisco through the Panama Canal to New York City, where he continued his studies. One of his teachers was Howard Pyle student Harvey Dunn. He soon received commissions for magazine illustration and advertising campaigns. During World War II, he also won an award for design of the best American war bond illustrations. As a cover artist, he worked on The Saturday Evening Post, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, True, Today’s Woman, Coronet, Liberty, and Country Gentleman. Among his most popular works were his illustrations of detective stories for pulp fiction publications.
James Gillray
1799, printed c. 1895
