L Fellows: Car Tires and Men's Fashion Illustration

Laurence Fellows (1885-1964), who signed his illustrations "L. Fellows," had an important role in the commercial art of the 1920s, 30s and into the 1940s. I know this because I saw plenty of his work in Art Directors Club of New York annuals and other collections of illustrations from that era.

Only one photo of Fellows has appeared on the Internet, and I could find virtually no information regarding his personal life. On the other hand, useful information about his career and works can be found here, here and (by illustration authority Walt Reed) here.

Fellows had a clean, spare style that observers believe he picked up while studying in France. This was used from around 1915 through the 1920s, especially for a series of advertisement illustrations he made for Kelly-Springfield tires. In the early 30s Fellows took up fashion illustration for expensive lines of men's clothing. During the 1930s he adjusted his style from thin outlines and generally flat surfaces to a more traditional watercolor style in response to changing illustration fashions. Also bear in mind that the proper goal of fashion illustration is to make garments "stars" of the show; this is why texture and pattern dominate Fellows' images here. In spite of these influences, Fellows' work remained distinctive.

Gallery

Kelly-Springfield tire ad illustration from around 1920 (give or take five years).

Perhaps a detail from another Kelly-Springfield ad, ca. 1926.

Couple at ship railing, 1920s.

Formal attire on an Art Deco / Moderne barstool, 1934

Couples dancing, formal attire, 1934

Greeting a woman, 1934.

College students chatting up coed in roadster, 1937.

Man not helping women exit automobile, 1936.

Polo club outdoor lounge lizards, around 1936.

Glaring shoe shine customer, 1935.

Fashionable attire and red sports car, London, 1938.

Perhaps a New York Easter Parade scene, 1941.

Fashion Photography: 1930s and Now

Obviously, some people are perfectly happy with it. But I'm not fond of the trend to a coarser society (c'mon pendulum, please start swinging back!).

One marker (one of those trendy intellectual-speak terms we notice these days) of this is the contrast in photography for women's fashions between now and 50 years ago. Take a look and maybe you'll understand what I mean.

Gallery

By Horst P. Horst - 1938

Toto Koopman by George Hoyningen-Heune - 1933

Marion Morehouse (right) and other model by Edward Steichen, for Condé Nast - 1930

Norman Shearer by George Hurrell - 1935
Yes, this is probably a publicity shot, but it could just as easily have been a fashion photo.

Zara ad campaign photo, Spring & Summer 2012

Chanel 2012 ad campaign photo by Karl Lagerfeld

Versace Fall 2012 ad campaign photo of Elza Luijendijk by Mert & Marcus

Feature-Distorting Makeup Fashions

If you don't have a model handy, the next option is using a photographic reference. And if you want to paint a picture of a pretty woman, why not use a photo of a movie star.

I'll tell you why not.

One reason is that publicity photos are usually retouched, and that retouching can distort light-shade relationships, hiding the true facial structure to some degree. This was particularly evident before 1950, when most publicity shots were in black and white which made extensive retouching easier to perform. (It's interesting that Joan Crawford had a heavily freckled complexion, yet nearly all publicity photos hide it.)

Another reason has to do with fashions in make-up. From the mid-1920s to around the mid-1940s, lipstick and eyebrow makeup practices were tailored to distorting natural facial features. Such distortions make it somewhat difficult to understand exactly what the underlying face was like.

Combining these two problems results in photos that are not worth using for reference unless one's goal is painting a period-piece scene. The photos below illustrate my point.

Gallery

Clara Bow - late 1920s

Evelyn Brent - late 1920s
Not all women did this, but some important movie stars did: Note the "bee sting" lipstick pattern where the edges of the mouth are not painted while areas above and below the lips at the center of the mouth are. The Cupid's bow feature of the upper lip is slightly exaggerated by the lipstick application shown in these photos.

Constance Bennett - 1933

Jean Harlow - mid-1930s
During the early to mid 1930s the Cupid's bow continued to be exaggerated, as can be seen in the photo of Constance Bennett. At least coverage now extends to the corners of the mouth. The Jean Harlow photo shows another fad of that era: natural eyebrows plucked and replaced by a penciled-in line. I have no idea why people thought that stunt improved beauty.

Ann Sothern - late 1930s

Hedy Lamarr - early 1940s

Veronica Lake - early 1940s
Natural eyebrows returned by the late 1930s and even received eyebrow pencil enhancement. Lips were enhanced by lipstick extending very slightly beyond the edges of the lips themselves.

I find that there are still a fair number of 1925-45 photos acceptable for reference. After 1945, matters improve somewhat. But an artist's best bet is to rely on informal photographs where retouching is absent and makeup is more likely to be lightly applied.

Precisely Delineated High Society

When I used "precisely delineated" in the title of this post, I didn't mean that high society was being pictured in its true state. Rather, I meant that the style of the artist had a precise look to it. At times it was almost geometric.

The artist is Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881-1949), descendant of an acting family whose father, Louis-Maurice, was a well-known illustrator. The link to Bernard is in French, so I'll note a few key points (with a few details incorporated from other sources). He was trained by his father, painter Luc-Olivier Merson and sculptor Jean Dampt and began exhibiting in 1903. He served as an aerial observer in the Great War and then lived in Fez, Morocco 1918-25. Starting in 1926 he traveled frequently to the United States. He died in the same airplane crash that killed violinist Ginette Neveu and noted French boxer (and dear friend of singer Edith Piaf) Marcel Cerdan.

Boutet de Monvel painted orientalist Moroccan scenes, but is best known for his society portraits, fashion illustrations and advertising illustrations. The image above is the left-hand panel of a 1929 two-page spread illustration used in advertisements for Hupmobile cars (the right-hand side simply shows the rest of the car against an essentially blank background, so the illustration could be used in either single or double-page formats). Hupmobiles sold in the top part of the middle price range, competing with Buick and Chrysler. Hupp advertising around 1930 was therefore intended to appeal to a sophisticated audience and a number of striking ads were published; I think the one shown above is especially nice.

Below are other examples of Boutet de Monvel's work.

Gallery

Self-portrait

Jean-Louis Boussingault and Andre de Segonzac

Comte Pierre de Quinsonas - 1913 (image slightly cropped)

Maharaja of Indore - 1934

Hupmobile advertising illustration - 1929 (cropped)

Illustration: New York City

Drawing

Many of the images include various straight lines and curves used to build up the subject-matter, these lines often extending beyond boundaries and intersection points (click images to enlarge and see this more clearly). This is a bit mannered, but I must confess that I like the overall effect Boutet de Monvel achieves in many of these works; lesser hands might easily botch it.

He has been considered an Art Deco style artist, if for no other reason than his use of clearly visible geometrically related lines. Other artists and illustrators in the 1920s and early 30s tried the same thing, but so far as I'm concerned, Boutet de Monvel was perhaps the very best at the style.

Example: Wrong-Era Hairstyle

My impression is that the practice of fashion conformity unraveled around 40 years ago. While it's possible to identify characteristics that peaked in usage at various times (bold patterns on men's sport jackets in the early 1970s, padded shoulders on women's garments about ten years later), these styles weren't nearly as dominant as those of previous decades. A good example is women's skirt lengths -- short in the mid-1920s, long in the mid-30s, knee-length in the early 40s, mid-calf during the 50s, etc.

Of course fashion following was never entirely lockstep. Older women tend to shy from wearing short skirts, for instance. And I tend to maintain a preppy look when my wife insists that I have to abandon my beloved blue jeans for some occasion or another.

Then there is the matter of transitions between dominant styles. Women's bobbed hairstyles of the 1920s were anticipated around 1910 when some avant-garde gals got their long tresses chopped. That bobbed style apparently became boring to some women even before 1930 and they began to let their hair grow out. Consider the photo below.

This publicity photo (which I cropped a bit) is of a 1929 Auburn model 120 with girls from a physical culture club of some sort providing a lot of added interest.

Note the girl on the left and compare her hairdo to those of the others. The girls on the right have the typical tight-wave permanents of the 20s, the one on the left has much longer hair that strikes me as being more "natural" and perhaps "timeless." She also lacks the boyish, curveless figure that was the height of female body fashion during the flapper era. Compared to the other two, she looks terrific, not to mention out of place given the rest of the setting.

Kees Did Fashion Art Too

I wrote about Fauvist-turned-society-artist Kees van Dongen here. Recently I came across a piece of fashion illustration by him and thought I'd present it along with a few other works that are fashion illustrations or items looking a lot like they were.

To set the scene, above is a fairly typical van Dongen painting that might have been done in the early 1900s. Note the large, darkly painted eyes and the intense, Fauvist color scheme.

Now consider some works he did in the late 1920s or the 1930s in the fashion illustration genre:

Gallery

This is from perhaps the British edition of Harper's Bazaar magazine.

From a French publication.

The two items above might not be fashion-related illustrations, though they give every appearance of being so.

Van Dongen retained his characteristic rendition of eyes, likely with the strong approval of the art director who commissioned the piece; the whole point being that the image was done by van Dongen himself, a well-known artist at the time.

What is missing is the Fauvist coloring, but Kees no doubt was willing to sacrifice that feature of his work for some francs that he needed to support his lifestyle.

I suppose there are many who consider van Dongen a sellout because he made a lot of money doing portraits of fashionable ladies and because of the commercial work shown here. Me? I figure that people need to make a living. Even artists.

Future Fashions from 1936

That's science fiction pioneer H.G. Wells at the left on the set of Things to Come, a 1936 movie based on his 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come that was produced by Alexander Korda. To the right are Margaretta Scott and Raymond Massey.

The plot has a 1940 war (the most accurate prediction is the date -- the Battle of Britain was fought that year) in which England and much of the world sinks to near-barbarism after decades of conflict. A group of engineer-technocrats recreates a modern society in Basra, Iraq and then spreads it throughout the world, setting things straight in a Wellsian socialist-inspired utopia. The final part of the movie takes place in 2036 where a mission to the moon is launched.

Photos below show some of the costumes predicted for 2036, a century after the release date of the movie.

I don't know who designed the costumes, but they surely had Wells' okay, grudging or otherwise (he had considerable input to the project). Ultra-broad shoulders aside, the impression I get is that of snazzed-up Roman Empire outfits with a generally clean look in synch with late-Deco modernism of the 1930s -- which should probably be expected.

We are 25 years away from the movie's fashion predictions, so there's a remote chance that they will be fulfilled. The photo below of a celebrity (Nicky Hilton, whoever she might be) indicates how things stand in our casual times.

1920s Paris Fashion Illustration

Fashion illustration is not dead. My evidence for this is the presence on Barnes & Noble bookstore shelves of several how-to and historical compilation books dealing with the subject.

But it might be on life-support. I just did quick flick-throughs of the Paris Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and did not notice a single human-rendered illustration: it was all photography. Not to mention those large-scale videos of fashion show runway models one can see as background clutter in shops.

I don't subscribe to the New York edition of The New York Times any more. So I don't know if the department stores in town still do much advertising there and, if they do, illustrate their ads with drawings rather than photographs.

Several decades ago the paper was packed with fashion advertisements illustrated with ink wash drawings by Dorothy Hood and other well-known artists. Photography was not used, I suspect, because of reproduction quality (lack of) on newsprint paper. Slick-paper magazines didn't have reproduction quality problems and had shifted to photography by then.

Back in the 1920s fashion photography was rare. Paris boasted fashion magazines that appeared weekly, featuring artwork by a corps of hardworking illustrators.

Those illustrations were a form of news reporting. Nothing very flashy and glamorous: that was the role of advertisements of the couturier houses. Drawings were straightforward, featuring the clothing. Poses were simple and faces were depicted as being attractive but not so much as to steal the show from the garments.

I find it all rather charming. Too bad it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see much in the way of these likes again.

Gallery

This is a weekly fashion magazine from 1929.

And here is a spread from a 1928 issue of L'Art et la Mode.

This is something fancier: it's printed in color.

More color. Note the geometric shapes in the background: Modernism rules!!

Click on images to enlarge.

Rene Bouche: Fashion Illustration and Beyond

Fashion illustration master René Bouché (Robert August Buchstein) was born in Prague 20 September 1905 and died in England 3 July 1963, though his career was in Paris in the mid-late 1930s and the United States thereafter. The most detailed biographical information I could find is here.

Fashion illustration is pretty much an artistic ghetto, given that it's a sub-field of illustration, itself a second-class citizen in the art world. But being a fashion artist has its advantages. Vogue and other publications could bring you a lot of money provided they accepted a lot of your work and would even put it on the cover from time to time. Also, given the well-heeled nature of its readership, a reputation as a famous fashion illustrator might lead to portrait commissions and other paid jobs.

Bouché did exactly that, as can be seen below. He even did abstract painting and rubbed elbows with New York's Abstract Expressionism grandees. I find his abstractions lightweight, but you are welcome to judge for yourself if you click on this link.

As for his portrait work, he tended to follow his fashion illustration style with pleasing results. This link to "100 Years of Illustration" has out-takes from a Life magazine feature showing Bouché painting actress Tammy Grimes; two pictures from that set are below.

What couldn't Bouché do? No one really knows because he chose to limit his subject matter. But, somehow, I wonder how well he would have done as a Pulp cover artist, portraying combat, or drawing football players for Sports Illustrated.

Here is a sampling of Bouché's work.

Gallery

Fashion illustrations

Another fashion illustration, this of Givenchy outfits - 1957

Illustration for a Schweppes advertisement

Edward R. Murrow

Jack Benny
The CBS television network commissioned Bouché to make portraits of some of its leading performers to use in advertising. At the time (the 1950s) CBS was regarded by itself and much of the general public as being the "classy" network, so it used a classy artist for these portrayals. Younger readers: Edward R. Murrow was a famous newsman and commentator, Jack Benny was one of America's top comedians.

Actress Audrey Hepburn

John F. Kennedy - Time Magazine cover, 9 June 1961
Since Bouché did Vogue covers, Time must have figured that he was good enough to do a little work for them.

Painting actress Tammy Grimes - Life Magazine, 19 May 1961
Note that the final result (below) is not the same as the initial version (above).

Self-Portrait
This was probably done in the later part of his life.