More Daniel Sayre Groesbeck Images

Daniel Sayre Groesbeck (1878-1950) was an illustrator with a nice touch whose work is scarce on the Internet. Much of that has to do with the fact that for a chunk of his career, he had the role of what is now called "concept artist" for movie studios. In particular, he was a good friend of, and worked for, the great Cecil B. DeMille. Since the illustrations he made for DeMille and others were essentially private commissions, they (almost?) never saw the light of day in his time. Much of what see today is from the catalog of an exhibit of his work at the Santa Barbara art museum from 2001.

I wrote about Groesbeck here. A Muddy Colors post dealing with him is here, and examples of his work done in Siberia and East Asia is here.

The images below are a supplement to the better works I posted earlier. Most are related to movies. Still, they are worth a glance.

Gallery

Reap the Wild Wind - 1942 film

Siberian Tax Collector

Samson (Victor Mature) - 1949

Delilah (Hedy Lamarr) - 1949

The Plainsman - 1936 film (Jean Arthur)

The Unconquered - 1947 film

The Unconquered - 1947 film

The Unconquered - 1947 film (Gary Cooper)

Gone With the Wind - 1939 movie

Scarlett O'Hara (Olivia de Havilland) dressed for the ball - Gone With the Wind
Perhaps the best work in the collection above.

Landing of Cabrillo - 1924
This painting was cleaned a few years ago, but most Internet images are of the pre-cleaned version.  Here I used the tools on my iMac to simulate the cleaning. (The darker version can be seen on the link above to my earlier post.)

Molti Ritratti: Dejah Thoris

Along with multiple portraits of famous people, now and then I'll present different versions of people for whom there is no photographic evidence or even people who are fictitious. The latter is the subject of this post.

Originally serialized in a magazine, Edgar Rice Burroughs' first story about John Carter of Mars -- "A Princess of Mars" -- eventually appeared in book form using that new title. That princess was Dejah Thoris, who naturally was featured on cover art for the many editions that appeared over the years.

If you do a web search on Dejah and call up images, you will see movie images as well as many cartoon-like illustrations. Those are ignored here. Below are book cover illustrations showing Dejah, allowing you to note the various ways artists chose to depict her. I also reveal which is my long-time favorite.

Gallery

"A Princes of Mars" cover art, Frank Schoonover - 1917
This is the earliest book cover, painted by noted illustrator Frank Schoonover. Here Dejah takes the form of an attractive Egyptian princess.

"A Princes of Mars" cover art, Vaclav Cutta
This is from a Czech edition, where she reminds me of 1920-vintage Hollywood exotic females.

Cover art for "The Warlord of Mars", J. Allen St. John
St. John famously illustrated many Borroughs books. Here too Dejah has a period Holywood appearance. However, John Carter really ought to look like Rudolph Valentino so as to match Dejah's Theda Bara, but he doesn't.

"A Princes of Mars" cover art, Frank Frazetta - 1970
Frazetta was hugely influential in the field of fantasy illustration, and his somewhat cartoon-like Dejah has been the model for most later illustration versions (that are not shown here).

"A Princes of Mars" cover art, Gino d'Achille - 1973
Here she is scantily clad, but not in a voluptuous pose.

"A Princes of Mars" cover, Michael WhelanWhelan gives Dejah a fabulous body, but again her pose is more modest than in Frazetta's version.

"A Princes of Mars" cover, Robert Abbett - 1963
Now this is my all-time favorite Dejah Thoris.

"A Princes of Mars" cover art, Robert Abbett
The original artwork, where the color is less hyped than on the book cover.
I first spotted the Abbett cover back in 1963 or 1965 at a news shop in, I think, Grand Central Terminal in New York City. It struck me so strongly that I simply had to buy a copy. Eventually the book disappeared from my collection. Years later, perhaps around 2014, I spied another copy at a book stall along the Seine in Paris, scooping it up for three euros. My problem was that I could not decipher Abbett's signature, increasing my long-term frustration regarding who did the artwork. Thankfully, a recent Web search allowed me to find that it was Robert Abbett, an illustrator I was unfamiliar with.

I also came across this commentary on the illustration by Gregory Manchess, an artist whose work I greatly respect. I was pleased that I wasn't the only one who appreciated Abbett's believable Dejah Thoris over the other versions.

Manchess wrote:

"This to me is one of the best A Princess of Mars covers ever done for the series. Painted in the mid-sixties, it captures that era of paperback style: from the handsome Napolean Solo look of John Carter, to the blue eye-shadowed, brunette Deja Thoris...

"From the wonderful color scheme of warm flesh against cool greens to the slap-dash brushwork, this painting has carried my interest for 40+ years. I love the way Abbett’s brush strokes carve around Deja’s shoulder and hair; I love the angle on John’s back and shoulders. Even the foreshortened sword is right on...

"But here’s where it gets me. Have you ever seen a sexier knee on a paperback? Exquisite."

More Fred Taylor Poster Art

I wrote here about Fred Taylor (1875-1963), best known for his London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) poster art during the 1920s and 1930s.

His work was almost always pleasing, so below are more examples for your viewing pleasure.

Gallery

The illustration part of a larger poster.

Showing Queen Elizabeth I's 1564 visit to King's College Chapel, Cambridge. I was there once for Evensong, and it strikes me that the height of the interior seems a bit exaggerated in part because the size of the people seems too small.

Moderne architecture required similarly simplified treatment.

Seen from the far side of the Neckar River.

An unusual view, and not what a 1920s tourist would ever see.

A 1930s vintage poster when Taylor and other illustrators simplified their styles to conform to artistic fashion.

A little fuzzy because the original was slightly smaller. Nevertheless, a nicely done scene.

Willian Russell Flint's Illustrations and Related Work

William Russell Flint (1880-1969) was an honored (knighted by King George VI), highly skilled artist of the representational persuasion. A fairly brief Wikipedia entry is here, but if you would like a lot more information about him, click here.

Should you do an Internet images search on his name, you will discover many pictures of very attractive nude young women. Since there was more to Flint's work than that, this post deals with his book illustrations from around 1910 along with watercolors and other paintings safe for viewing at your office desk.

Gallery

La Belle Dame Sans Merci - 1908

Princess Ida - The Gate yields, Hildebrand and Soldiers rush in - 1909

From "Le Morte D'Arthur" - 1910-1911

From "Le Morte D'Arthur" - 1910-1911

Calypso and Odysseus

Girls Weaving Baskets

Park scene

Tamborine players

The Festival of Santa Eulalia, Andalusia - c. 1932

Carnation - c. 1932

Raquel and Manula

Famous Illustrators' Work at Wall Drug

If you're an illustration fan and happen to be driving on Interstate 90 in southwestern South Dakota close by the Badlands, either coming from or going to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, do not fail to stop in at Wall Drug, a long-time major tourist attraction.

There, scattered along various walls in the restaurant area you will be able to spy illustration art by a number of well-known artists from the 1920s into the 1950s.

Below are some photos I took. Due to placement, lighting conditions and such, they serve as highly rough documentation. Go to Wall and see the real things.

Click on images to enlarge.

Gallery

Harvey Dunn -- "The Gray Dawn"

Harvey Dunn

N.C. Wyeth -- "The Devil's Whisper"

Dean Cornwell "The Train Station"

Dean Cornwell -- "The Man You Plan to Hang" -- 1924

Harold von Schmidt

Unknown illustrator

John La Gatta -- "Cowgirls"

Keith Ferris: Disciplined Aviation Artist

If you have visited the Air and Space Museum on the Washington DC mall, you probably viewed the huge mural (above) of U.S. Army B-17 bombers under attack. It was painted by acclaimed aviation artist Keith Ferris (1929 - ). His Wikipedia entry is here. A series of images of his studio begins here.

There are three basic approaches to depicting the shape of an aircraft. One is to copy a photograph or use a photo as the basis and make slight adjustments to compensate for camera lens distortion of the subject. The second approach is to "eyeball" the subject, either by observing it in person or making use of reference photos so as to understand the subject's shape from differing viewpoints. This runs the greatest risk of creating an unrealistic depiction. Finally, the artist can make use of descriptive geometry to construct an image derived from two or more scaled profile of plan views of the subject airplane. Absent computer imaging software, description geometry is time-consuming, but yields proportionally accurate results (given the degree of perspective forcing used).

Keith Ferris preferred to use descriptive geometry, combining that with a good sense of composition and scene-setting.

Gallery

Dawn of a New Era - No. 504 Squadron Meteor IIIs over central London - by Frank Wootton - 1945
First, I contrast Ferris' work with that of another famous aviation artist, Frank Wootton (1911-1998). I might be wrong, but I think Wootton either never used that approach or else did so seldomly. The Gloster Meteor jet fighters in the image above do not quite seem realistic to me. This might be due to a lack of photos of them at the time he made the painting not long after the war had ended.

First of the Few - test flight of first production Spitfire - by Frank Wootton - 1980
Wootton painted this scene many years later. I need to note that most of his images were realistic views of the subject aircraft. But this Spitfire's wings seem out of proportion -- granting that "Spits" are difficult to draw properly. This is clearly a "freehand" job by Wootton.

Spitfire - by Keith Ferris
Now a Spitfire depiction by Ferris.

Spitfire workup - by Keith Ferris
It seem much more realistic because he did this workup before creating the final image.

Descriptive geometry detail of F-4 Phantom - by Wade Meyers
I include this as another example of a descriptive geometry based illustration in process.

Keith Ferris doing a workup at his drawing board
Photo from Farris' Web site showing him at work during an early stage of a project.

Farmer's Nightmare - Curtiss P-3A from Kelly Field, Texas
Ferris was the son of an Army Air Corps pilot who was stationed at Kelly Field (the main AAC training base during the 1930s). Keith would have been very young when P-3s were flown there, so this painting and the one below are more a tribute to that era than any distinct childhood memory of such planes.

Curtiss P-3As over Kelley Field

Real Trouble - Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf Fw 190 interceptors
One of many World War 2 images painted by Ferris.

Test of Courage - Fw 190 attacking a B-17
The same squadron attacking B-17s. The Fw 190 was firing at the bomber and the B-17 was spitting back 30 caliber machine gun fire from two positions, each using two such weapons. In such a situation the German fighter might have been shot down instead of the bomber.

To Little, Too Late - showing one of the few Army P-40s that got airborne during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Russell J. Brown shooting down a MiG-15 in the first jet-to-jet air combat, 8 November, 1950

Battle of Bien How Air Base - F-100 scramble