A fun drypoint of (presumably) a wino greeting his good friend the bottle.

John August Groth (1908-1988) was a painter and illustrator best known for his sports and war subjects. Born in Chicago, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He was discovered at the age of 25 by Arnold Gingrich, founding editor of Esquire magazine, who happened by Groth's work at an outdoor art fair and hired Groth to fill out the first issue with 17 pages of illustrations and gave him the title of art director. Groth held that position for the next four years, until he left Chicago for New York. From the beginning, Groth gravitated toward depictions of men in action, in a style he called "speed line," in which he made gestural line renderings based on on-site sketches and fleshed out the form with freely brushed watercolors.An adventurous spirit, Groth was an artist-correspondent during World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, drawing battlefield scenes from sketches made on site, and impressing no less than Ernest Hemingway, who said: "He gets to the essence of war."