Rea Irvin

Born in San Francisco, he studied for six months at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute (later named the San Francisco Art Institute), and then started his career as an unpaid cartoonist for The San Francisco Examiner. The Honolulu Advertiser was among the other newspaper art departments that he served in. He also contributed to the San Francisco Evening Post. He also worked as an itinerant actor (for both stage and screen), newspaper illustrator, and piano player. He would later incorporate Japanese imagery in satirical kakemono for The New Yorker. ad by Rea Irvin in 1900 He also created a series of humorous advertisements for Murad (turkish tobacco cigarettes). He also contributed the illustrations for "Snoot If You Must," by Lucius Beebe, a noted raconteur of New York's cafe society (1943, D. Appleton-Century). He was fired from his position as art editor at Life in 1924. ==Career at The New Yorker==

However, 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, Irvin had assumed that the magazine would fold after a few issues, The magazine's first cover, of a dandy peering at a butterfly through a monocle, was drawn by Irvin; the dandy replaced at the last minute a drawing of theater curtains revealing the skyline of Manhattan. An alphabet drawn by the American etcher Allen Lewis, who had received training in woodcutting in Paris, was used as the typographical basis for the "Irvin type." Emily Gordon has written that "Irvin's own intimacy with classic form and craft, and his genial willingness to share that expertise ... allowed him to create a complete device: a design, a typeface, a style, and a mood that would be instantly recognizable, and eminently effective, almost a century later." ==The Smythes==

Irvin also created the comic strip The Smythes. It ran in the New York Herald Tribune during the early 1930s. Irvin very briefly drew a superhero parody, Superwoman, a Sunday-only strip which debuted on June 27, 1943. However, National Periodicals already had a registered trademark for "Superwoman" and immediately issued a cease-and-desist order. The New York Tribune syndicate withdrew the strip the next day, making the character's debut her only appearance. ==Retirement==

Six years before his death, Irvin and his wife retired to a home in Frederiksted, Saint Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. He died of a stroke there at age 90 on May 28, 1972. ==References==