Dream drawing

Saul Steinberg, in a letter to Hedda Sterne, perhaps April 1944. Steinberg was serving in the United States Navy. He and Sterne would marry later that year. Steinberg says that all he wants is to stay with Sterne “and make drawings”:

We’ll make a long table for drawing, about 12 ft long, with pen & ink section, tempera and watercolor section. Then we’ll buy from some café or restaurant a small table with marble to make drawings on thin paper over the marble surface, the pencil is really sliding, the ideal surface for pencil drawings.

And from another letter, Steinberg to Sterne, perhaps September 1944:

My hand is itching for drawings. I have a thirst for sitting on a tall chair at a drawing table covered with white-yellow paper as a background or cover, and then a book of white smooth paper, a bottle of Indian ink, colored ink, aniline, sharp pencils, small pens, brushes and quiet afternoon, and Hedda painting somewhere in the room.

Both letters are quoted in Deirdre Bair’s Saul Steinberg: A Biography (New York: Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, 2012).

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