Rabbit Man

The Macbeth Gallery in New York, which has been presenting solid conservative U. S. painting for 40 years, had a one-man show of water colors, oils and prints last week. There were portraits, landscapes of Maine, Canada, North & South Carolina, and an effective series of diamond point etchings of West Virginia mountaineers with their cabins, their sad-eared mules, their hound dogs. But for all its felicity of line one fact alone lifted this exhibition into prominence. It was the work of Harrison Cady, known to millions of children as the Peter Rabbit Man (he has made some 7,000 drawings of Peter), the indefatigable illustrator of the syndicated nature stories of Thornton W. Burgess.

The cartoonist who longs to paint portraits and Do Fine Things is as much a stage character as the comedian who longs to play Hamlet. What makes Cartoonist Cady's non-commercial work easier to take than the arty strivings of most of his competitors is the simplicity of his approach. He is not the least bothered by surrealism. Communism, psychoanalysis or the plight of NRA. When he wants to paint the harbor of Rockport or the portrait of a nun he does it as naturally as he would a flopsy-mopsy bunny.

Born in Gardner, Mass., Harrison Cady has had a busy and remunerative career. His father was Town Selectman and prosperous proprietor of the general store, who studied trees and animals with his son, encouraged his early sketches. When that loquacious African explorer, the late Paul Belloni du Chaillu, went to Gardner to lecture* young Harrison Cady decorated his poster in the store window with a fine display of lions, elephants, and gorillas. Explorer du Chaillu was delighted, and at the age of 17 Harrison Cady arrived in New York to be an artist. He had an easy success. He illustrated stories for Harper's Young People, for the Brooklyn Eagle, for St. Nicholas. As a staff artist on Life for 23 years he earned more than a living wage.

His cash surplus has enabled him to live comfortably in Brooklyn where he has a secret studio to which he escapes from moppets who make pilgrimages to the Peter Rabbit Man. He collects Spanish furniture, ship models, Persian ceramics. He travels where he will when he will, and life has left him, at the age of 56, as healthy and bright-eyed as Caleb Cottontail himself.

One of the best known living historians of Peter Rabbit, Harrison Cady did not invent the character, is not Peter Rabbit's only illustrator. Peter Rabbit was the brainchild of Beatrix Potter, a gentle English lady skilled in telling stories that children really like, and illustrating them in sly effective watercolors. First published in 1904, Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit books have sold by the hundreds of thousands, are cherished by adults who spurn her imitators. Besides the Tale of Peter Rabbit, other Potter best sellers include: Tale of Benjamin Bunny, Tailor of Gloucester, Tale of Two Bad Mice, Tale of Jemima Puddleduck.

* Paul du Chaillu, author of A Journey to Ashangoland, Stories of the Gorilla Country, first discovered African Pigmy tribes in the Ogawe district of Central Africa in 1865, first convinced Europe of the existence of gorillas with eminently read-highly colored tales of the giant apes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.