PBA Galleries

Campbell, E. Simms. Collection of his magazine art. Includes: a full issue of Life magazine, August 14, 1931, with one of his earliest cartoons on Page 19; 4 pages of Campbell cartoons removed from the August and December 1938 and September 1939 issues of Esquire; the full Esquire issue of April 1938, for which Campbell both wrote and illustrated a 4-page article about his trip to Haiti with a 3-page color “Portfolio of Haitian Sketches”.

After studying art in Chicago, Elmer Simms Campbell (1906-1971) moved to New York City, working in an advertising agency while contributing cartoons to national humor magazines, these illustrations being the first work by an African-American artist to be featured in popular national periodicals. Then in 1933, Campbell’s career took off when he began a 25 year association with the new Esquire magazine, for which he created its pop-eyed cover mascot. While he had close ties to Harlem Renaissance culture throughout the Depression era – illustrating a novel about Haiti by Anna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, a book of poetry by Sterling Brown, brochures for the Cotton Club, and his legendary 1933 “Night Club Map of Harlem” (see the next listing) - not until 1938 did he occasionally incorporate “real” Black figures and themes into his work - like the four Esquire pages in this group, one depicting Harlem street scenes to accompany a Sterling Brown poem, another being a striking portrait of a Black music club. The illustrated Haiti article may be his first (and only) stab at illustrating his own words. By World War II, Campbell returned to the white mainstream, producing “Cuties” cartoons featuring sexy blond women “on the make” which were popular with GIs. By the 1950s, his Esquire cartoons (four examples are included here) only occasionally showed Black figures as stereotypic African natives or fantasy Turkish Harem slaves.