Lot Essay
According to Laurence and Judy Goffman Cutler, "While the Arrow Collar man was seminal in the business world, the New Year's Baby was perhaps J.C. Leyendecker's greatest contribution to global iconography. He invented the notion of a baby ringing in the New Year for a December 1906 Saturday Evening Post cover. Joe's first New Year's baby was actually a cherub with small wings, an illustration that immediately caught the public's fancy. Subsequently, for almost forty years every January issue of The Saturday Evening Post had a Leyendecker New Year's Baby on the cover. Throughout America, people anxiously awaited the Post's new Baby cover, and the magazine itself became as much a tradition as the mirrored ball dropping in Times Square. Globally, Leyendecker's New Year's Baby became as popular as Santa Claus. It is now embraced as a worldwide symbol for a new beginning and a fresh future." (J.C. Leyendecker: American Imagist, New York, 2008, p. 196) Part of this iconic tradition, the present work graced the cover of the December 29, 1928 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.