“The Other Half, Two” by Alan Foster on the cover of “The Saturday Evening Post,” September 26, 1931.
During America’s Great Depression (1929-1941), many families could no longer afford to provide adequate care for their children, which led, sadly, to a drastic increase in orphaned or abandoned children. Many children competed for jobs with their elders in an effort to make a contribution to their families.
In Alan Foster’s image, a boy from a working class, alone, looks through an iron fence at the games of well-to-do children. These vastly different worlds of childhood, isolated from each other, are reminiscent of the unjust social order that author Charles Dickens railed against a century earlier.
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Alan Foster (1892-1969) illustrated 30 covers for the Post. Many of Foster’s illustrations were joyful and Rockwellian in nature: kids playing sports, going on a hayride, or getting in trouble in school. He illustrated for several magazines of the 1920s, including The New Yorker. In addition to painting and cartooning, Foster sold trucks and had a brief acting career. For three years in the 1940s he created a cartoon series for Collier’s called “Mr. Fala of the White House.” Fala was Franklin Roosevelt’s well known dog. [Source: www.saturdayeveningpost.com/artists/alan-foster/]
“The Other Half, Two” by Alan Foster on the cover of “The Saturday Evening Post,” September 26, 1931.
During America’s Great Depression (1929-1941), many families could no longer afford to provide adequate care for their children, which led, sadly, to a drastic increase in orphaned or abandoned children. Many children competed for jobs with their elders in an effort to make a contribution to their families.
In Alan Foster’s image, a boy from a working class, alone, looks through an iron fence at the games of well-to-do children. These vastly different worlds of childhood, isolated from each other, are reminiscent of the unjust social order that author Charles Dickens railed against a century earlier.
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Alan Foster (1892-1969) illustrated 30 covers for the Post. Many of Foster’s illustrations were joyful and Rockwellian in nature: kids playing sports, going on a hayride, or getting in trouble in school. He illustrated for several magazines of the 1920s, including The New Yorker. In addition to painting and cartooning, Foster sold trucks and had a brief acting career. For three years in the 1940s he created a cartoon series for Collier’s called “Mr. Fala of the White House.” Fala was Franklin Roosevelt’s well known dog. [Source: www.saturdayeveningpost.com/artists/alan-foster/]