Cartoonist Children's Books Magazine cartoons Obituary

Dana Fradon – RIP

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D. D. Degg October 8, 2019 1 minute 0 comments

Famed magazine cartoonist Dana Fradon has passed away.

Arthur Dana Fradon
April 14, 1922 – October 3, 2019

From the obituary:

Dana attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York where he met and married Comic Illustrator, Ramona Fradon.
He wanted to pursue a career in political cartooning and landed his first contract with the New Yorker magazine in the late 1940’s. Dana went on to become one of the magazine’s top tier political cartoonists for 4 decades, being one of the all-time most reprinted cartoonists of his era. He also sold to the Saturday Evening Post, Playboy and other magazines. After retirement, he published a series of award winning Children’s Books with Dalton on medieval History with a character being named for Dana.

From Michael Maslin’s tribute:

Dana Fradon, the last surviving New Yorker cartoonist of Harold Ross’s era (he was the last cartoonist contracted under Mr. Ross’s editorship), and one of The New Yorker‘s most prolific cartoonists (he is in the top twenty of the magazine’s artists who have contributed over a thousand drawings), passed away October 3 in Woodstock, New York.  He was 97.  Mr. Fradon’s first cartoon appeared in the issue of May 1, 1948 (it appears below).  His last New Yorker drawing appeared April 21, 2003. Mr. Fradon was born April 14, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois.

Mike Lynch also honors the cartoonist.

Hundred of Dana’s cartoons can be laughed at in the CondeNastStore.

Dana cartoons and specialty drawings at Attempted Bloggery.

October 15 Update:

Fradon was one of a group of comics elders whom I revered when I first joined them on the magazine’s pages. I had closely noted and admired Fradon’s work for years, and studied with care the many gifts that he brought to this singular form of storytelling. As a fledgling artist, I paid attention to the breadth of his curiosity as well as the mastery of his drawings—the structured washes and tones and the animated line. This is what Fradon used to satisfy the signature requirement of magazine’s first art editor, James Geraghty, who asked of his artists, “Make it beautiful.”

Ed Koren remembers Dana Fradon.

October 16 Update:

The New York Times obituary.