Barbara Shermund (June 26, 1899 – September 9, 1978): In the shadows of early 20th-century American cartooning—a field overwhelmingly dominated by men—Barbara Shermund stood out not just as a woman, but as a sharp, stylish voice who wielded satire with both elegance and bite. With over 600 cartoons published in The New Yorker, as well as bold feminist commentary in Esquire, Life, and Collier’s, Shermund quietly carved a legacy that only in recent years has begun to receive the recognition it deserves.
A Talent Born and Nurtured
Born in San Francisco on June 26, 1899, Barbara Shermund inherited a dual artistic legacy: her father, Henry Shermund, was an architect, and her mother, Fredda Cool, a sculptor. Artistic curiosity and encouragement were part of her upbringing. Her talent was precocious—by the age of nine, she was already publishing art on the San Francisco Chronicle’s children’s page. In 1911, she tried her hand at fiction, winning attention with a short story in The San Francisco Call.
Shermund studied painting and printmaking at the California School of Fine Arts, refining a classical technique that would later underpin her distinctive cartooning style. But her life changed dramatically after the death of her mother from the Spanish flu. Grieving and seeking a new beginning, Shermund moved to New York in 1925, where she would become part of a revolution in American illustration.
A Woman in Ross’s New Yorker
1925 was not only a turning point in Shermund’s life—it was also the year Harold Ross launched The New Yorker. The magazine aimed to capture the urbane, dry wit of Manhattan and quickly became a magnet for rising literary and artistic talent. Shermund was among the first female cartoonists to contribute. In fact, her earliest works appeared in The New Yorker during its foundational year, with covers in both June and October.
Unlike many artists of the time, Shermund both drew and wrote her own captions—giving her a singular control over tone, voice, and intent. Her cartoons, often featuring flapper-era women in satirical scenes, were imbued with a feminist wit that poked holes in conventional gender roles and lampooned the social expectations placed on women. One memorable cartoon features two men lounging by a fire, one remarking, “Well, I guess women are just human beings after all.”
Shermund’s figures—loose-limbed and expressive—danced across the page with a kind of elegant irreverence. Her brush and pencil work had a classical fluidity, but her dialogue was razor sharp. She skewered hypocrisies, questioned power dynamics, and reflected the emergence of the “New Woman”—a liberated figure of the Jazz Age who challenged patriarchal constraints.
Defying Conventions on Her Own Terms
In a time when many women were expected to play background roles, Shermund flourished as a self-sufficient artist. She eschewed a studio, preferring to draw at her kitchen table using large watercolor paper for her original sketches. She did not rely on staff writers or ghost captioners. Everything—down to the choice of a word or the curl of a line—was unmistakably hers.
Over time, however, the editorial tone at The New Yorker shifted. By the 1930s and 1940s, Shermund’s strong feminist voice became less prominent in the magazine’s pages. As her cartoons became more stylized and her captions less piercing, she gradually moved away from the publication that had once been her greatest platform.
Yet Shermund did not vanish. From 1944 to 1957, she produced Shermund’s Sallies, a syndicated cartoon panel for Hearst’s Pictorial Review, reaching a wide audience through Sunday newspapers. Her popularity endured, even if she remained underappreciated in the broader canon of American cartooning.
In 1950, her achievements were formally recognized when she, alongside Hilda Terry and Edwina Dumm, became one of the first three women inducted into the National Cartoonists Society—an honor long overdue.
Forgotten and Found Again
Despite her success, Shermund lived her later years in quiet isolation. She passed away in 1978 in a nursing home in Middletown Township, New Jersey. Her family had lost touch with her, and her ashes remained unclaimed in the nursing home’s storage.
Decades later, in an act of familial rediscovery and tribute, Shermund’s niece Amanda Janes Gormley began researching her life. To her surprise and dismay, she found her aunt’s remains still unburied. In 2018, Gormley launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to give Shermund a proper resting place, marked by a headstone commemorating her artistic legacy.
The rediscovery of Shermund’s work has since gained momentum. In 2022, The New York Times published a belated obituary in its Overlooked series, finally acknowledging her contributions to American visual culture. And in November 2024, Fantagraphics is set to release Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund, edited by Caitlin McGurk—a long-awaited biography and art retrospective.
Further cementing her posthumous revival, the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art in Pennsylvania will host a major exhibition of her work from February 15 to May 15, 2025.
A Lasting Voice
Barbara Shermund’s cartoons remain startlingly modern. Their feminist edge, ironic dialogue, and clear-sighted satire speak directly to our time, even though they were crafted nearly a century ago. She was a woman who did not wait to be invited to the table—she drew her own, with a flourish and a wink.
As the comics world continues to reckon with its history and elevate its overlooked voices, Shermund’s rediscovery offers more than just a correction of the record—it’s a celebration of artistry that was always bold, always funny, and always ahead of its time.
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