John Held Jr. (January 10, 1889 – March 2, 1958) was a cartoonist, printmaker, illustrator, sculptor, and author. One of the best-known magazine illustrators of the 1920s, his most popular works were his uniquely styled cartoons which depicted people dancing, driving, playing sports, and engaging in other popular activities of the era.
His friendship with Harold Ross, creator of The New Yorker, served him well in his career, as his cartoons were featured in many prominent magazines including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, and Life magazine.
Due to his sense of humor and keen observation of his surroundings, Held was praised for his cartoon depictions of the cultural paradigm shift in the 1920s. The drawings depicted the flapper era in a way that both satirized and influenced the styles and mores of the time, and his images have continued to define the Jazz Age for subsequent generations.
After F. Scott Fitzgerald complained that William Hill designed the characters on his covers to look too much like himself and his wife Zelda, Fitzgerald hired Held to illustrate his book covers, after taking a liking to his cartoon style. This represented the stylistic shift of the period from realism to abstraction which influenced the Art-Deco style of the decade. Held's first cover for Fitzgerald was a companion book of short stories for The Beautiful and Damned, and he subsequently illustrated Tales of the Jazz Age (1922) and The Vegetable (1923).
To some, Held is the F. Scott Fitzgerald of American art in the early to mid-1900s. Some critics disagree, claiming that Held's work was too superficial, but Fitzgerald lived a far more tragic and tumultuous life that was well reflected in his writing. Held matched Fitzgerald, not in depth of subject, but in skill and honesty.