Name/Title
Cartoon by Helen HokinsonContext
Helen Hokinson was born in Mendota, Illinois in 1896. She took a two-year course (1913-1915) at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. At the Academy, she studied fashion illustration and design. From 1915 to 1920, Hokinson had a studio where she worked as a free-lance artist. In 1920, she moved to New York City, intending to begin a career in fashion design. In that capacity, she did work for Lord and Taylor, B. Altman and Co., and John Wanamaker. During this time, Hokinson also began making sketches of everyday life she witnessed on her walks around the city. She would often add a humorous slant to these drawings.
In 1925 she sent one of her sketches to the new magazine, The New Yorker. It was accepted, appearing in the July 1925 issue of the six-month-old magazine. She quickly became one of The New Yorker's most valued cartoonists. Until 1950, at least one Hokinson picture, including covers, appeared in every issue. Then, in the early 1930s, Hokinson began to concentrate her cartooning efforts on portraying the preoccupations and often mundane enthusiasms of matronly suburban upper-middle-class women. These ladies, possessing a certain lovable innocence and naivete, became famous as "Hokinson Women."
Louis Bromfield acquired three of these original Hokinson Women cartoons. They hang on the walls of the Big House to this day. On November 1, 1949, Helen Hokinson's airliner collided with a surplus Navy fighter plane on a training flight over Washington D. C. There were no survivors. Helen Hokinson was only 53 years old and still at the height of her career when she died.
- Research and text by Thomas Bachelder of the Malabar Farm FoundationLocation
Building
The Big HouseOhio State Park
Malabar Farm State Park
