Al Hirschfeld

Hirschfeld worked between 1903 and 2003 across caricaturist, artist, postage stamp designer, painter and draftsperson and 1 further recorded occupations. The registers place that work in caricature. This article rests on 22 published texts, 1 digitised documents and 40 scholarly references drawn from named institutional registers. Every statement below returns to a source shown in the evidence panel; where the record is silent or divided, the article says so instead of resolving it.

Al Hirschfeld studied at Art Students League of New York. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are caricature. Work by Al Hirschfeld is recorded in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art, National Museum of World Cultures, Harry Ransom Center, National Portrait Gallery and Print Collection. Distinctions recorded are National Medal of Arts and Library of Congress Living Legend.

• Name — Albert Hirschfeld • Born — 21 June 1903 • Birthplace — St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. • Died — 20 January 2003 • Place of death — New York City, New York, U.S. • Training — Art Students League of New York • Children — 1

Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex apartment at 1313 Carr Street in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Isaac, was a German-Jewish traveling salesman, while his mother, Rebecca, was from a family of Orthodox Russian Jews. His maternal grandparents refused to eat in his parents' non-kosher home. He talked about how the family would not permit bread in the house during Passover; during that time the family ate matzah and ham sandwiches. He moved with his family to New York City in 1915, where he received art training at the Art Students League in Midtown Manhattan and the National Academy of Design in Carnegie Hill, Manhattan. In 1924, Hirschfeld traveled to Paris and London, where he studied painting, drawing, and sculpture. When he returned to the United States, a friend, fabled Broadway press agent Richard Maney, showed one of Hirschfeld's drawings to an editor at the New York Herald Tribune, which got Hirschfeld commissions for the newspaper before he moved to The New York Times. Hirschfeld's style was unique, and he was considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary drawing and caricature, having influenced countless artists, illustrators, and cartoonists. His caricatures were regularly drawings of pure line in black ink, for which he used a genuine crow quill. Readers of The New York Times, and other newspapers prior to widespread color print, will be most familiar with the Hirschfeld drawings that are black ink on white illustration board. However, there is a whole body of Hirschfeld's work in color. His full-color paintings were commissioned by many magazines, often as the cover. Examples are found in TV Guide, Life, The American Mercury, Look, The New York Times Magazine, the New Masses, and Seventeen. He also illustrated many books in color, most notably among them Harlem as Seen by Hirschfeld, with text by William Saroyan. CBS commissioned him to illustrate a preview magazine featuring the network's new television programming in fall 1963. One of the programs was Candid Camera, and Hirschfeld's caricature of the show's host Allen Funt outraged Funt so much he threatened to leave the network if the magazine was published. Hirschfeld prepared a slightly different likeness, perhaps more flattering, but he and the network pointed out to Funt that the artwork prepared for newspapers and some other print media had been long in preparation and it was too late to withdraw it. Funt relented but insisted that what could be changed would have to be. Newsweek ran a squib on the controversy.

• Illustration — Hirschfeld in June 1955, by Carl Van Vechten In 1943, Hirschfeld married German actress Dolly Haas. They were married for more than 50 years and had a daughter, Nina. Hirschfeld is known for hiding Nina's name, written in capital letters ("NINA"), in most of the drawings he produced after her birth. For example, the name appears in a sleeve, in a hairdo, or somewhere in the background. As Margo Feiden said, Hirschfeld engaged in the "harmless insanity", as he called it, of hiding her name at least once in each of his drawings. The number of "NINA"s concealed is shown by the number written to the right of his signature. Generally, if no number is to be found, either "NINA" appears once or the drawing was completed before she was born. For a few months after Nina's birth, Hirschfeld intended the hidden "NINA"s to appeal to his circle of friends. But what he had not realized was that the population at large was beginning to spot them, too. When Hirschfeld thought that the gag was wearing thin among his friends and stopped concealing "NINA"s in his drawings, letters to The New York Times ranging from "curious" to "furious" pressured him to begin hiding them again. He said it was easier to hide the "NINA"s than it was to answer all the mail. From time to time he lamented that the gimmick had overshadowed his art. In Hirschfeld's book Show Business Is No Business, Feiden recounts this story to illustrate what Hirschfeld meant when he referred to the "NINA" counting as a harmless insanity: "The 'NINA'-counting mania was well illuminated when in 1973 an NYU student kept coming back to my Gallery to stare at the same drawing each day for more than a week. The drawing was Hirschfeld's whimsical portrayal of New York's Central Park. When curiosity finally got the best of me, I asked, What is so riveting about that one drawing that keeps you here for hours, day after day? ' She answered that she had found only 11 of 39 "NINA"s and would not give up until all were located. I replied that the '39' next to Hirschfeld's signature was the year. Nina was born in 1945." In his 1966 anthology The World of Hirschfeld, he included a drawing of Nina that he titled "Nina's Revenge". The drawing contained no "NINA"s. There were, however, two "AL"s and two "DOLLY"s ("the names of her wayward parents"). In the Fantasia 2000 segment, the crimp of Duke the Builder's toothpaste tube contained a "NINA" in tribute to Hirschfeld.

Hirschfeld married chorus girl Florence Ruth Hobby in 1927; the couple separated in 1932 and divorced in 1943, the year he and Dolly Haas were married. Haas died in 1994, aged 84. They had a daughter, Nina. In 1996, he and Louise Kerz, a theatre historian (b. born 1936), married. On January 20, 2003, Hirschfeld died of natural causes in his home at 122 East 95th Street in Carnegie Hill, Manhattan at the age of 99. He was survived by Kerz and Nina.

Al Hirschfeld is recorded with the occupation postage stamp designer. Recorded with the occupation graphic artist. Recorded with the occupation caricaturist. Recorded with the occupation draftsperson. Recorded with the occupation painter. Classed in the genre caricature. Recorded as caricaturist, artist, postage stamp designer, painter and draftsperson. Established in Bibliothèque nationale de France under 12912286s. Established in Library of Congress under n80149265. Established in RKDartists under 262009. Established in Discogs under 2324937. Established in FAST under 64035.