15 Facts About Rea Irvin

Rea Irvin was an American graphic artist and cartoonist.

Rea Irvin created the Eustace Tilley cover portrait and the New Yorker typeface.

Rea Irvin first drew Tilley for the cover of the magazine's first issue on February 21,1925.

Rea Irvin worked as an itinerant actor, newspaper illustrator, and piano player.

Rea Irvin contributed to Cosmopolitan when it was a serious literary publication.

Rea Irvin illustrated Wallace Irwin's "Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy" in Life.

Rea Irvin created a series of humorous advertisements for Murad.

Rea Irvin contributed the illustrations for "Snoot If You Must," by Lucius Beebe, a noted raconteur of New York's cafe society.

Rea Irvin was fired from his position as art editor at Life in 1924.

However, Rea Irvin had joined an advisory board to help launch The New Yorker and then worked on the magazine's staff as an illustrator and art editor.

When he had first taken the job, Rea Irvin had assumed that the magazine would fold after a few issues, but his work would ultimately appear on the cover of 169 issues of The New Yorker between 1925 and 1958.

Besides covers for the magazine, Rea Irvin drew various illustrations, department headings, caricatures, and cartoons.

Rea Irvin added the New Yorker's squiggly column rules; these provide a delineation between the text and illustrations.

Rea Irvin was responsible for the vertical "cover strap" that was used for the magazine's margins.

Rea Irvin died of a stroke there at age 90 on May 28,1972.