Heritage Sells New Yorker Cartoon for Record $175K

In 1993, The New Yorker ran a single panel cartoon that would establish itself in pop culture history and the birth of the internet. Created by Peter Steiner, the “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon shows two dogs sitting in front of a computer exploring the newly introduced internet. It became the most reproduced cartoon in the magazine’s history.

The original drawing sold for $175,000 during Heritage’s Illustration Art Auction on October 6, 2023. The sale set the record for highest price paid for a single panel cartoon and broke the record for art by Steiner. The buyer, who preferred to remain anonymous, had been trying to buy it from the magazine since it was first published, according to Heritage.

Steiner drew over 430 cartoons for The New Yorker, and has since become a spy novelist and painter. “I realized the cartoon is autobiographical and that it’s about being an imposter or feeling like an imposter,” Steiner said. “I’ve had several checkered careers, and in everyone, I felt like a bit of a fraud. I mean, I think many people have that syndrome, the sense that, yeah, I’ve got everybody fooled.”

The auction realized a total of $1.3 million for just over 400 lots, including three of Beatrix Potter’s illustrations from There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe that hammered for $37,500.

Alberto Vargas’ intricately detailed 1928 painting Spanish Lace sold for $38,750, his watercolor and pencil Bridal Nude brought $20,000, and his watercolor A Sunny Disposition, True: The Man’s Magazine interior illustration went for $16,250.

George Petty had multiple Esquire magazine watercolor illustrations in the auction, including the Critics Praise my Line and Form cover for $25,000, Pretty in Pink calendar illustration for $20,625, and Now, None of Your Tricks, Everett! Interior illustration for $18,750.