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Description

Exceptionally rare Richard & Peggy Yardley pictorial map of Baltimore.

The map depicts various humorous (though some offensive) scenes around Baltimore.

Peggy Yardley is named as a co-artist on a few of Richard's maps, namely this one and his Ken Magazine map of Africa. She also worked on the similarly rare and similarly printed, "Being a Map of Annapolis Famous Town of Song & Story Attempting to Locate the Naval Academy and Other Places".

This map, like many of Yardley's, is reflective of the political and social environment of Maryland in the early 20th century. Several politically incorrect images of African Americans are featured. Including one image of a black man chasing another with the caption "A Gentleman of Color Asserts Himself".

The dating to circa 1932 is based on a similar Yardley map, of West Point, titled "A Map of West Point Home of our Future Generals", which was published in that year.

Rarity

We find no records of the map in OCLC nor RBH. Not in Rumsey. Not in Hornsby. It is apparently unrecorded, although we have handled it one time before.

The map was apparently printed in small numbers using blueprinting and then hand-colored. This points to a very limited edition.

Yardleys' work is an interesting dichotomy of rarity between the mass-produced magazine maps and these practical one-offs.

This series of cyanotype Yardley maps should be considered their rarest and most desirable.

Condition Description
Trimmed to neatline.
Richard Q. Yardley Biography

Richard Q. Yardley (1903-1979) was an American editorial cartoonist.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 11, 1903, Yardley attended the Friends School and the Maryland Institute. Yardley started as an artist-retoucher in the news department at the Baltimore Evening Sun in 1923 and moved into creating local news and commentary cartoons in 1934 for the Morning Sun.

In the late 1930s, Yardley drew several provacative pictorial maps for the anti-Fascist Ken Magazine.

In 1949 he became the Sun’s editorial cartoonist after Edmund Duffy’s retirement.

From 1961 until 1965 Yardley also drew the daily comic strip panel, Our Ancestors which was syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. In addition to these works, his cartoons appeared in the New Yorker and theReporter. Yardley was a member of the National Cartoonists Society, the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists and the National Press Club.

Richard Q. Yardley retired in 1972 and died on November 25, 1979.

The Richard Q. Yardley Cartoons collection at Syracuse University consists of 43 original political cartoons and 2 copies of cartoons. Twelve cartoons are dated and 31 cartoons are undated. One of the cartoons is signed, "W. Hogarth Yardley" and it is unknown if this cartoon was drawn by Richard Q. Yardley. Satire and sarcasm were regularly used elements in Yardley’s cartoons.

The cartoons were drawn with ink on illustration board as well as paper with traces of blue pencil visible. The cartoons vary in size.