MONDAY MORNING MACABRE NO. 68

[Richard Taylor cartoon from PLAYBOY April 1967.]

EXTRA: Richard Taylor's obit tells a little about his career that went beyond his work for PLAYBOY.

RICHARD TAYLOR, CARTOONIST, DIES
May 26, 1970 | New York Times Archives

WEST REDDING, Conn., May 25—Richard Taylor, a cartoonist whose heavy‐lidded, sexy women and similarly lidded, sophisticated men were well known to readers of The New Yorker, Playboy and other magazines, died of cancer to day at his home here. He was 67 years old.

In drawings for magazines and in book collections of his work, Mr. Taylor satirized the foibles, follies and self‐delusions of those who considered themselves worldly wise and self‐possessed.

But unlike many cartoonists who deal in similar themes, Mr. Taylor shied from vitriolic comments. As Calder Willingham noted in a 1944 review of one of Mr. Taylor's collections, “generally his wit tends more to an amiable emphasis of the ludicrous.”

That collection, “The Better Taylors: An Album of Cartoons,” was one of several containing his work. Another, “Wrong Bag,” was published in 1961. Mr. Taylor also illustrated books written by others, and he was the author of “Introduction to Cartooning,” based on his procedure.

A typical product of this procedure was a cartoon published in The New Yorker that showed a sophisticated gathering at a party dominated by an opulently bedecked Christmas tree in an affluent living room.

The children of the host and hostess are burdened with serving trays loaded with food and drinks, while their parents are informing a guest, “We'd never bother with Christmas, of course, if it weren't for the children.”

Mr. Taylor did not limit him self to cartooning. His water colors have been displayed in several museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and he had one‐man shows of his paintings in New York galleries.

Mr. Taylor was born in Fort William, Ontario, and studied, among other places, at the Ontario College of Art and the Los Angeles School of Art and Design.

After winning a cartoon contest conducted by The Toronto Evening Telegram, he drew a comic strip for that paper for about a year. Afterward, he worked for the Goblin, a Canadian humor publication that ceased publication in 1929, before his work was published in The New Yorker and other American magazines.

He leaves his wife, the former Maxine MacTavish. Memorial services will be private.