In 1956 my father began to do illustrations which accompanied the Profiles in The New Yorker. He was paid eighty five dollars for each of these small pen and ink portrait drawings and it was through Joseph Mitchell, that great New Yorker staff writer, that he began to do them. Once again it was a literary man who appeared out of nowhere to help him out.

"Joe Mitchell came to pick me up on Wednesday," he wrote in a letter to my mother, "at nine o'clock in the morning. It turns out that he met me, many years ago, in Barney Gallant's, and has seen most of my graphic work, and it was through him that Shawn [William Shawn, the editor of The New Yorker] approached me. He is a man of some fifty years of age, very correct and amiable in his manner, with a fine curiosity about art and literature, living at 44 W 10 Street: our neighbor. We went to the end of Staten Island together and the day was sunny and mild. The negro Mr Hunter was awaiting us: a magnificent type of 87 years of age and full of life and living all by himself in his own house. I did the studies in pencil in ten minutes: Mitchell showed me what there is to see there: we had a few beers and we returned to Manhattan at about two o'clock in the afternoon. Mitchell's 'Hunter Profile' is very good and I am glad to collaborate with him."

Mr Hunter (Caretake of a cemetary on Staten Island Mitchell had taken an interest in.)

Pen on Paper: 11 1/2 x 14 1/2"

John P. Marquand

Ink on Paper: 13 x 17"

Georges Braque

Pen on Paper: 11 x 15" (with stickers The New Yorker added.)

Georges Braque

Pen on Paper: 11 x 15"

Helaine Newstead

Pen on Paper: 11 1/2 x 14 1/2"

Marianne Moore

Pen on Paper: 11 1/4 x 15"