Gretchen Dow Simpson – RIP – The Daily Cartoonist

The New Yorker cover artist Gretchen Dow Simpson has passed away.

From The Providence Journal obituary:

Gretchen Dow Simpson, the acclaimed painter whose depictions of the American Northeast graced 58 covers of The New Yorker, died peacefully in Providence, Rhode Island on April 11, 2025, surrounded by her loving family. She was 85.

Best known for her precise, light-filled compositions of New England clapboard houses, stairwells, and seascapes, Gretchen built an instantly recognizable visual language rooted in clarity, quietude, and atmosphere. Her paintings often featured the clean lines of traditional architecture and the dramatic contrasts of light and shadow—scenes so still they seemed suspended in time, inviting contemplation.

Gretchen’s first New Yorker cover was accepted by New Yorker art editor and mentor Lee Lorenz in 1974 after nine years of rejections. It was the start of a two-decade collaboration that brought her art into millions of homes. Her work was also commissioned by The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Bostonian, Random House, and The Book of the Month Club.

From New Yorker historian and cartoonist Michael Maslin:

Sad news reached the Spill yesterday of the passing of Gretchen Dow Simpson. Ms. Simpson, who was 85, contributed 58 covers to the magazine from August 19, 1974 to June 7, 1993.

During the mid-to-late 1970s when I began examining, cover-to-cover, each and every issue of The New Yorker, I became an instant fan of her art. I found Ms. Simpson’s work to be a perfect example of the magazine’s embrace of a wide graphic landscape. She was perhaps The New Yorker‘s most architecturally minded cover artist; the subject matter usually focused on interesting intersections of lines, angles, and light. Her cover art was serene, never screaming from the newsstands.

The Simpson style fell out of favor during new editor Tina Brown’s tenure in the 1990s.

Gretchen Dow Simpson may be the only artist to have done a front cover and a back cover to The New Yorker.

From GoLocalProv:

Artist Gretchen Dow Simpson, who died peacefully on April 11, wrote: “As a painter and photographer, and artist in general, I am inspired and motivated by the juxtaposition of shapes, light and color. My paintings are pieces of the world as I see it. I want to be able to imagine what is outside the edges of my images and see the beauty in the isolation of the subject matter that I choose to portray.

The Gretchen Dow Simpson website.

The Condé Nast page of Gretchen Dow Simpson New Yorker covers.