Lot 6: Worth Brehm (American, 1883-1928) "Roddy joined the scuffle, trying to retain the horn,"

"Roddy joined the scuffle, trying to retain the horn," illustration for Booth Tarkington's "Horn of Fame," Cosmopolitan, October 1916. With a reference photograph of two boys struggling for the horn, taken by the artist.
Signed.
Charcoal on illustration board.
57 x 37cm (22 7/16 x 14 9/16in).
Matted and framed.

The most enduring works of Pulitzer Prize winner Booth Tarkington are his three Penrod books. A cross between Tom Sawyer and Peck's Bad Boy, eleven-year-old Penrod delighted both young and adult readers with his amusing adventures in a typical Midwestern town before World War I. Worth Brehm was a highly admired American book and magazine illustrator best known for his pictures for Penrod and Sam (1916) and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1923). This and the following illustration appeared only in the magazine serialization of Penrod and Sam. Brehm's reputation as an artist might have equaled that of his contemporaries had he not died so young. Dr. Alexander Nemerov of the Department of the History of Art at Yale University has praised Brehm's ability to "immerse himself in a story with the spontaneous, unselfconscious concentration."