Seaside fun
Clara Miller Burd (1873-1933)
‘Summer fun at the seaside’
Cover illustration for The Modern Priscilla (August 1922)
Summer may be nearly over, but there is still time to enjoy playing in the waves at the beach before we head home from our summer vacations and back to school or work. That is clearly the message Clara M. Burd conveyed in her August 1922 cover illustration for the magazine Modern Priscilla. Burd chose to explore children’s summer fun in the water by depicting three young bathing beauties—all appear to be images of young girls despite the various bathing costumes they wear—at play in the sea. (more…)
Billboard painters
Stevan Dohanos (1907-1994)
Billboard Painters in Winter
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post (February 14, 1948)
In the late 1940s and 50s illustrator Stevan Dohanos painted over one hundred and twenty cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post. His style is often compared to Norman Rockwell, although Dohanos’ choice of subject differed. While Rockwell is noted for idealizing American life, Dohanos illustrated suburban and small town reality by documenting the ordinary, everyday images of American people; Dohanos emphasizes the subject’s environment rather than just the people themselves.
Ancient History: Husbanettes?
Rea S. Irvin (1881-1972)
Ancient History, 1912
Cover illustration for Life v. 61, no. 1582 (February 20, 1913)
Ink, gouache, and opaque white on board
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Art Wood Collection of Caricature and Cartoon, unprocessed item
The cover illustration for the February 20, 1913 issue of the humor magazine Life, is titled “Ancient History.” It is a single panel cartoon, drawn in the style of a Greek vase decoration, red on black. At the center of the circular illustration is the image of an older woman with grey hair dressed in a flowing Doric chiton (a single length of fabric folded, wrapped, and pinned), poking a startled man dressed in a toga (an elder statesman perhaps) in the chest with an umbrella ferrule. The central woman is a caricature of Susan B. Anthony. (more…)
Homes of the poor
Bror Thure de Thulstrup (1848-1930)
Homes of the poor, 1883
Cover illustration for Harper’s Weekly (July 28, 1883): 465 (title page).
wood engraving
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Collections
In the middle of the summer of 1883, Harper’s Weekly chose to describe and illustrate the deplorable living and working conditions found in immigrant homes in the tenements of New York City. The front page illustration Homes of the poor was created by Bror Thure de Thulstrup to illustrate the Harper’s Weekly article, “Tenement Houses in Summer” (no author indicated). (more…)
I Want You
James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960)
I Want YOU for U. S. Army, c. 1917 and I Want You, February 1917
Poster, lithographic print and photomechanical print
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., POS-US.F63, no. 9 (C size) and AP2.L52 Case Y
When World War I erupted, James Montgomery Flagg was already a well known artist. Beyond the age for military recruitment, he fulfilled his nationalistic duty by creating patriotic posters for the war effort. This famous image created by Flagg encouraged recruitment for the United States Army. (more…)
The Call of Nature
Rollin Kirby (1875-1952)
The Call of Nature, 1908
Cover illustration for Collier’s Weekly (September 5, 1908)
Early in the fall of 1908, Collier’s Weekly’s cover showed a man and woman walking together along a foot path. Floating in the blue and white in the sky, above the masthead are the words in caps and red ink, “The Outdoor.” Read together with the weekly’s title, the appended title tells us that this issue is about the out doors. The couple walking along the path of the cover image, are meant to reinforce the purpose of this issue. But this couple is both more and less than they seem. While they walk together along the same path, they represent two different life styles. (more…)
The Tapestry of Invasion
Rea S. Irvin (1881-1972)
D-Day Invasion of France, 1944
Cover illustration for New Yorker magazine (July 15, 1944)
Ink and watercolor
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs, LOT 9329
This New Yorker cover illustration was published on July 15, 1944 to commemorate the Allied armies D-Day invasion of Normandy. It was created by Rea S. Irvin, the art editor of the magazine, who also created many of the weekly’s covers during his long tenure at the magazine. Early in the morning of June 6, 1944, the Allied forces assaulted the coast of Normandy, France in two phases: the first was the airborne invasion that landed troops and the second was an amphibious landing of Allied infantry and armored divisions along a 50-mile stretch on the coast of France. (more…)
What Goes Around, Comes Around
Sam Brown
Wash Day, 1924
Cover illustration for The Country Gentleman (October 4, 1924)
In the fall of 1924, the cover of The Country Gentleman showed a bright-faced young woman dressed in her work-day apron with the sleeves of her blouse rolled up as she scrubs her wash. Her face is lifted and her mouth open; over her ears are a pair of earphones whose wires lead down by the wash tub and presumably out of the picture to their source. Her eyes are shining and her cheeks rosy, as the young woman seems to sing along with whatever she is hearing. (more…)
Girlish Glee*
Sewell T. Collins, Jr. (b. 1876)
Visiting an exhibit of Japanese prints, 1907
Cover for Life (June 20, 1907)
I have not been able to discover much about Sewell Collins, the illustrator of this ‘book number’ cover for Life magazine from 1907: he lived and worked in Chicago at least during the 1890s, and as this cover illustration shows, he also did work for New York concerns. From its inception in 1883 through its acquisition by Henry Luce in 1936, Life was known as a humor and general interest weekly magazine.
For this cover, Collins’ created an image of a beautiful and decorous young woman seated amidst a gallery display of Japanese prints. As she looks out of the picture, she holds an open book in her hands. She is still wearing a veil or scarf over her hat and a striking orange velvet shawl over her shoulders. Because she looks out of the picture, as though the viewer has interrupted her perusal of her book, she engages the viewer with her forthright stare. (more…)
Referencing Other’s Art
R. O. Blechman (b. 1930)
Modern Laocoön
Cover illustration for The New Yorker (December 17, 1990)
R. O. Blechman is known for his distinctive use of line in his illustrations. Laid down with stops and starts, Blechman’s drawn lines breathe along with the characters they create. This line style may express nervous energy or, when emboldened with watercolor wash, speak to a three-dimensional form. Blechman’s linear technique is very recognizable and he often employs it to describe familiar images that reference other, older art.* (more…)
Grafting
Winslow Homer (1836-1910)
Spring Farm Work—Grafting, 1870
Illustration for Harper’s Weekly XIV (April 20, 1870): 276.
Wood engraving from a drawing by Homer; signed in the block, on the tree trunk, “W. H.”
Spring Farm Work—Grafting, is one of a variety of painted and illustrated images Winslow Homer created after the Civil War exploring American rural New England and upstate New York farm life: from the Veteran in a New Field, 1865 to Milking Time, 1875. (more…)
Maying
Adelia Belle Beard (1857-1920)
May Pole Dance, 1887
The American Girls Handy Book: How to Amuse Yourself and Others by Lina Beard and Adelia B. Beard (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1887): 71.
In the 1880s, when Adelia Belle Beard drew this sweet image of the May Pole Dance, how innocent the young girls looked. Also particularly handsome are the floral borders of daffodils and apple blossoms that frame the image.
Dinosaur Parade
James Gurney (b. 1958)
Dinosaur Parade, 1992
Illustration for Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time (Atlanta, GA: Turner Publishing, 1992)
Oil on illustration board
In his Dinotopia story series, author and illustrator James Gurney has created a lost island where dinosaurs survived whatever destroyed their species in our world and where people and animals work to live in a harmonic “peaceful interdependence.” A Land Apart From Time is the first of four books Gurney created to tell the tale of this magical, beautiful place. As Gurney tells it, his own work is based upon the discovered journals of a 19th century explorer, Arthur Denison. One of Gurney’s websites (www.dinotopia.com) includes his description of first finding a sketchbook by Denison and later finding one of Denison’s journals. (more…)
A Hungry Bear
Philip R. Goodwin (1882-1935)
A Bear Chance, 1907
Illustration for Cream of Wheat advertisement
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, accession # 70.64
In 1907, illustrator Philip Goodwin created a painting for the Cream of Wheat Company advertising their breakfast cereal. A Bear Chance depicts a large ravenous brown bear seated in a snowy clearing of a pine forest devouring a crate full of the healthy Cream of Wheat cereal. In the foreground of the painting, the artist depicts the bear tracks in the snow reflecting the bear’s intentional pursuit of the cereal crate. The marketing message insinuates that Cream of Wheat is so delicious that the hibernating bear was lured from peaceful sleep to enjoy this breakfast cereal. (more…)
The Child, a calendar
Elizabeth Shippen Green (1871-1954)
Playing Chess, 1902
Cover illustration for The Child, a Calendar, 1903, 1904
Collection Delaware Art Museum, 1977-301-1
Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935)
Warming Feet, 1902
Illustration for The Child, a Calendar, 1903, 1904
Collection Delaware Art Museum, 1977-301-2
Artists Elizabeth Shippen Green and Jessie Willcox Smith met while studying illustration art with Howard Pyle at the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. Both had extensive art training before their classes with Pyle and were already selling illustrations to the popular press. (more…)
April Fool
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
April Fool: Checkers, 1943
Cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post (April 3, 1943)
Original art is in a private collection.
With this 1943 April Fool cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post, Norman Rockwell explored the visually incongruous as a way to produce a cover appropriate to celebrate April 1st. (more…)
Illustrating an Artist-type
Arthur B. Frost (1851-1928)
Bonds of Sympathy, 1890
Cartoon for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine v. 81 # 482 (July 1890): 321.
Pencil and ink on paper
Caption: Mr. Turps (who is doing a little job of painting in the studio). “Yes, sir: us painters has a many things to complain of. What with these ‘ere trusts raisin’ the price of ile [oil] on us, and the difficulties of gettin’ our money when our jobs is done, we don’t have too easy a time of it.”
Gibson Girl and Chambers Girl
Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944)
Her poise, her unconsciousness, the winning simplicity of her manner were noticed everywhere, 1911
Illustration for The Common Law by Robert W. Chambers (New York and London: D. Appleton and Co., 1911): 307.
ink and pencil on board
Norman Rockwell Museum Collection, gift of Everett Raymond Kinstler, NRM.2009.37
Charles Dana Gibson’s images of America, especially American women, from the 1890s through 1910, defined the age contemporaneously and retrospectively. Her poise, . . . . is one of 56 drawn illustrations Gibson created for Robert W. Chambers’ 1911 novel, The Common Law. The story chronicles the tribulations of a young woman, Valerie West (the young lady pictured at the middle left of the above scene), who was left penniless after her mother dies. She supports herself as an artist’s model and becomes involved with two painters: the wealthy talented and young Louis Neville, the first artist for whom she first modeled, and the unpredictable hot-blooded Spanish painter, Querida. (more…)
An Atlantic Adventure
Ralph Pallen Coleman (1892-1968)
An Atlantic Adventure, 1933
Illustration for “An Atlantic Adventure” story by Diana Bourbon (1900-1978) in Cosmopolitan (August 1934)
Oil on canvas
Collection of the Society of Illustrators, donated by Ralph P. Coleman, Jr., 079.017
Ralph Pallen Coleman was a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Art (then part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and now an independent university called The University of the Arts). His first published illustration appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1915. He went on to illustrate many more magazines and books including this image for a transatlantic story in Cosmopolitan magazine. (more…)
Mystery on the Snow
Walter M. Baumhofer (1904-1987)
Mystery on the Snow, c. 1934
Cover illustration for “The Mystery on the Snow” by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent) for Doc Savage Magazine (May 1934), later published as Book 15 in the Doc Savage series (1934) with a different Baumhofer painting on the paperback cover.
Oil on canvas
Collection of Society of Illustrators, 083.031
The strong, tanned, clean-shaven countenance doing battle in the snow is Doc Savage, whose bronze skin, golden eyes and bronze hair were the reason for the appellation, “Man of Bronze.” (more…)
“Our War Eagles”
Frank E. Schoonover (1877-1972)
Getting Ready to Go Up (Contact) and Dropping Bombs Over German Country (Bombing), 1918
Illustrations for “Our War Eagles” in Red Cross Magazine (July 1918): 17 & 18; Contact was also used as paper book cover image for Deeds of Heroism and Bravery, ed. by Elwyn A. Barron (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Pubs., 1920)
oil on canvas
Lent from the Collection of Don and Martha DeWees
Contact and Bombing were painted by Frank E. Schoonover as part of a series of four illustrations focused on the activities of American aviators and their ground crews published in the Red Cross Magazine during World War One (also known as The Great War and The War to End All Wars.) (more…)
God’s Trombones: Judgment Day
Aaron Douglas (1899-1979)
The Judgment Day
Illustration for God’s Trombones, by James Weldon Johnson (New York: Viking Press, 1927)
Medium unknown
Location unknown
Standing with one foot on a mountain and one in the middle of the sea, the angel Gabriel sounds his silver trumpet, signaling the end of the world. Mankind’s saved raise their hands to be received into heaven while sinners are thrown into the fiery mouth of hell. This illustration was created by Aaron Douglas to illuminate one of poet, writer, musician, politician, educator and political activist James Weldon Johnson’s (1871-1938) seven traditional African American sermons presented in free-verse poetry in God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse, published in 1927. (more…)
The Blue Hour
Tom Lovell (1909-1997)
The Blue Hour, 1951
Illustration for Cosmopolitan Magazine
Gouache on board
Thanks to Heritage Auction Galleries in Dallas for the use of the original painting’s image. [From the Estate of Charles Martignette.]
I’m beginning this post with a request, please help me find where this illustration was published and for what story it was created. I’ve already benefited from assistance from a variety of collectors and enthusiasts in this search, but we’ve had no success. If someone can find the citation for this image, I will re-address it in a second post. Without a text to go with this anachronistic Tom Lovell illustration The Blue Hour, we are left with only our eyes and our knowledge of American life in the 1950s to aid our understanding of what we see. So what is there? (more…)
Italian Gardens, 1904
Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966)
La Palazzina (Villa Gori), Siena, 1903
Illustration for Italian Villas and Their Gardens by Edith Wharton (NY: The Century Co., 1904)
Oil on board
Society of Illustrators, Purchase Fund, 089.005
In 1902, Century magazine asked Edith Wharton (1862-1937) to write a series of articles about Italian villas and their gardens. To that end, Wharton visited some fifty villas traveling around Rome, Florence, Siena, Genoa, in Lombardy and the Veneto. Many were closed to the public. Maxfield Parrish was commissioned to create 26 color illustrations to accompany the articles; subsequently the publisher turned the work into a popular book that cost $6 in 1904. This was one of the first of Parrish’s illustrated books to be published in color. (more…)