PBA Galleries

TLs. 1 pp. On personal stationery.

To Art Young: “Here is Mr. Illes Brody, a very dear friend of mine, who wants to revenge all your past crimes by sketching you. In the meantime he will also interview you. I hope you will find a half hour for him, which will be greatly appreciated by me…” Hungarian-born Pogany (1882-1955) was one of the best-known book illustrators of the early 20th century (as well as a portrait painter of the rich and famous and set designer for the Metropolitan Opera). When he wrote this letter, he had already produced such illustrated masterpieces as his Ancient Mariner, Omar Khayyam, Parsifal, Tannhauser and Lohengrin, and, that year, Alice in Wonderland. Art Young was a popular cartoonist for Socialist political magazines - which would get him into legal trouble during the post-World War I Red Scare. (Ironically, Pogany himself would have similar McCarthy era troubles when he was falsely identified as brother of a Hungarian Communist leader). Iles Brody became a critical chronicler of the British royal family and, as restaurant critic of Gourmet magazine, of snobbish New York café society. His “sketch” of Young was probably destined for a magazine.