"The Audience, Saturday Evening Post Cover" Lot no. 4137
By Amos Sewell (American- 1901-1983)
1956
28.50" x 27.00"
Oil on Board
Signed Lower Left
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Original cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, July 28, 1956. The Post described, “The cows don't realize it is rude to stare at a person without saying anything. They are reflecting that men seem to do goofier things than any other animals, and are keeping their thoughts to themselves, as they dont speak English. Does the surveyor fear the cows? Only mildly; mostly it is women who get conniption fits from cows. But those boring eyes are addling his concentration so that he knows not whether he is adding or subtracting. If the editor who is writing these words had a cow staring over his shoulder, he would, in the long run, scream. Amos Sewell’s cowscape emphasizes that cows are remarkable starers. Did you ever notice a herd of them parked on a hill, every one peering fixedly in the same direction? What would they be looking at? Tomorrow?”
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Amos Sewell had a special empathy for children and also particularly enjoyed depicting homespun, rural subjects. These special gifts were ideally combined in the illustrations he made for a series of stories about Babe, Little Joe, Big Joe, and Uncle Pete by R. Ross Annett that ran for over twenty years in The Saturday Evening Post.
Sewell was born in San Francisco and studied nights at the California School of Fine Arts, working days in a bank. After some years of this, he decided to try his luck as an illustrator in the East. To get there, he shipped out as a working hand on a lumber boat going by way of the Panama Canal.
In New York, he studied at the Art Students League and at the Grand Central School of Art. Among his teachers were Guy Pene DuBois, Julian Levi and Harvey Dunn. At the same time, he began to draw black and white dry-brush illustrations for the Pulp magazines.
He illustrated his first major manuscript for The Country Gentleman in 1937; next came The Saturday Evening Post, for which he subsequently also painted many covers. This led to commissions from other national magazines. Sewell also illustrated for many major advertisers, and his work won awards from the Art Directors Clubs of New York and Cleveland, were exhibited at the Society of Illustrators, and included in traveling exhibits both here and abroad.