HIRSCHFELD, AL

born June 21, 1903, St. Louis, Mo., U.S. byname of Albert Hirschfeld American caricature artist, especially known for his drawings appearing in The New York Times, portraying show-business personalities. Hirschfeld's family moved from St. Louis to upper Manhattan in New York City when he was age 11, and at age 17 he went to work as the art director of Selznick Studios in the city's Astoria district. With money saved, he went to Europe in 1924 to study art, residing mostly in Paris in the 1920s but returning often to New York City. In 1925 a Hirschfeld caricature drawn on a theatre Playbill was reproduced by The New York Herald Tribune. After his work became more popular and was published in several New York newspapers, he entered into an agreement with The New York Times in 1929 for the use of his theatre caricatures. (His work of theatrical and nontheatrical personalities continued to appear in numerous other publications.) In the 1930s he took a long trip to the Far East, where Japanese and Javanese art is said to have influenced his graphic style. Beginning in the 1940s, Hirschfeld illustrated books by such authors as S.J. Perelman (Westward Ha! , Swiss Family Perelman ), Fred Allen (Treadmill to Oblivion ), and Brooks Atkinson (The Lively Years ); and he also began producing books of which he was both author and illustrator, such as Show Business Is No Business (1951) and Hirschfeld by Hirschfeld (1979). In The World of Hirschfeld (1968) he wrote extensively about his life and technique. Hirschfeld's drawings, watercolours, lithographs, etchings, and sculptures are to be found in both private and museum collections.