Thornton Oakley, Howard Pyle's Atypical Student

Thornton Oakley (1881-1953) received a BA and an MA in architecture from Dear Old Penn (I went there too), as mentioned in his Wikipedia entry as well as this other fairly lengthy source.

But he became aware of famed illustrator Howard Pyle and his training program down the road from Philadelphia in Chadd's Ford, near the Delaware border. So he dropped the idea of becoming an architect and learned illustration, making a successful career at it.

Pyle did not deal much or at all on the mechanics of making art. Instead, he stressed psychological factors of picture-making, having to do the the artist becoming intellectually, emotionally and theatrically involved with the subject.

Nearly all of Pule's students went on to careers in illustration, some highly successful ones, making illustrations dealing with people in historical or fictional settings. Not so Oakley. Much of his work had to do with industrial scenes having little or nothing in the way of story-telling. Perhaps his architectural training and interests had something to do with this, though he often sought to dramatize his scenes Pyle-like.

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Broadway scene
An early illustration.

The Betsy Ross House
Another work not typical of his later production.

Building Military Airplanes
Probably created in 1917 or 1918, showing airplanes destined for non-European service. Planes to be used in France during the Great War were given roundel insignia similar to those of the UK and France, but with the outer band painted red, the middle one blue and the central dot white.

Building the Manhattan Bridge over the East River
The bridge was completed in 1909, but I'm not sure when this illustration was.  For many years Oakley tended to favor vertical formats for his industrial illustrations as seen here, the preceding image and the two following ones.

Ocean Liner Passenger Terminal
These passengers have completed customs inspection and now need to find ground transportation.

Mills
Oakley usually included a few workers, sometimes to feature them at their tasks, or in this case to provide scale.

Radio-Telephone Control Room
This looks somewhat like a matte painting for a sci-fi movie.

Subway Platform, 34th Street
Probably painted in the very late 1930s or early 1940s, judging by the length of the red-orange skirt the nearest woman is wearing.

West Side New York Bus Terminal
From about the same period.  Here Oakley's style had shifted to the sketchier, watercolor-influenced illustration fashion that began in the early 1930s.

Loading a C-47 Transport
From about 1943, judging by the red-bordered insignia on the aircraft.  Actually, most of the planes are C-47s, but the tail of the second aircraft in line is that of a Curtiss C-46.  So Oakley clearly was painting this on-site or working from a reference photo.  And paying good attention.

Fashions and Automobiles by Leslie Saalburg

Leslie Saalburg (1897-1974) was highly successful for most of his long illustration career. This despite the fact that his style changed little -- often the cause of a career foundering when illustration style fashions changed. Some of this had to do with timing. His use of India Ink pen outlining and watercolor or perhaps colored ink washes to fill areas was in line with 1920s fashion illustration styles and also the general illustration shift from heavy oil paints to washes during the 1930s. By the 1950s Saalburg thickened his washes for some of his work as a slight concession to later style trends, but the results remained easily identifiable as his work.

Although many Saalburg illustrations can be found on the Internet, biographical information is sparse. One site with a good deal of information regarding his work and working practices is here, though it has little about his personal life. For what it's worth, I can add that, although he was American, he was born in London and died in Paris -- fitting places given the scenes he usually portrayed.

An illustrator a decade older than Saalburg who had a similar career with regard to style and subject matter was Lawrence Fellows (1885-1964) who I wrote about here.

Below are some examples of Saalburg's work.

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Women's fashion illustration from 1929.

Men's fashion illustration.

British country clothes.

Illustration for Nettleton shoes advertisement.

Page from Esquire magazine.

French Line advertisement from 1933.

Saalburg also made many illustrations for series dealing with classic automobiles. Shown here is a 1933 Packard Dual-Cowl Phaeton.

1933 Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow, Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

1937 Cord 812 Convertible Coupe.

1954 Buick Skylark pictured at West Point.

Gordon Grant, Illustrator and Marine Painter

Gordon Hope Grant (1875-1962) began his career as an illustrator but gradually shifted to producing marine paintings and lithographs. A short Wikipedia entry is here. It does not mention that Grant, born in San Francisco, was sent to Scotland for schooling. That involved months at sea on a sailing vessel rounding the Horn. He studied art in London before returning to America, where he then lived in New York City.

Many of his works seem to be undated, and for this post, I make little attempt to guess when they were made. However, I did my best to arrange them in approximate chronological order.

From images found on the Internet, Grant's marine art was much better than his early illustrations, though he had the skills to have made better illustrations. Perhaps expectations of art directors in the early 1900s was a factor. His 1930s Saturday Evening Post covers (not shown here) were done fairly well.

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Puck cover - 1909

Puck Cover - February 1912
Many early illustrations featured pretty women.

Army recruiting poster - c. 1919
Pretty static. I would have been inclined to give the background Rhine castle more emphasis to appeal to a sense of adventure with more to it than holding a rile.

Arching Elms - lithograph
Nice use of shade.

Old Windjammer - lithograph
Strong composition.

Photo of Grant working on painting of USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) for the White House - 1926

Watercolor paintings similar to White House USS Constitution painting
I could find no image of the oil version.

Pulling in the Fish Net
Nice atmospherics here.

Fishwharves, Gloucester
Watercolor.

Clear for Action, USS Chester - lithograph
Judging by the biplane aircraft, this was probably made before 1941.

Photo of cruiser USS Chester CA 27
Although the pose is similar, this photo was World War 2 vintage because the tripod foremast has been changed to accommodate radar.

Task Group 21-6 Patrols the Atlantic (America Rises to the Challenge)
A World War 2 painting.  The positioning of the carrier, destroyer and cruiser is wrong. So is the perspective. If this were reality, a three-way collision was in the offing. Chalk it up to artistic license with the goal of dramatization.

Up Close: Walter Gotschke

I wrote about automobile illustrator Walter Gotschke (1912-2000) here and here.

As I mentioned in the first link, "It seems that Gotschke was self-taught, but had little trouble understanding how to portray machines and settings accurately with strong doses of atmosphere and emotion. When necessary, he could change his style to tight rendering. Sadly, he started losing eyesight around 1985 and was blind by 1990, some ten years before his death."

Although I've viewed his work in publications for many years, I don't recall ever seeing one of his illustrations in person. Until recently. In February I visited the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California. It has a fabulous collection of French cars mostly from the 1920s and 1930s. There also was a small section devoted to automotive art that included one of Gotschke's "impressionist" style illustrations that I photographed and present below in a detail.

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To set the scene, here is a typical Gotschke car race illustration I found on the Internet. It depicts ace German driver Rudi Caracciola in a Mercedes-Benz SSK at Semmering-Bergrenne in 1928.

And this is my reference photo of the illustration at the Mullin museum. It shows French driving ace René Dreyfus in 1930 at Monaco driving a Bugatti.

Then I took a close-up photo of the lower-left part.  The inscription is to Dreyfus, adding interest to the illustration.  Although Gotschke included a good deal of mostly thinly-painted overstrikes to create a sense of both movement and instantaneous capture, beneath all this is solid drawing.  That is, the general impression is of sketchiness, but the basis is solid, carefully done depiction.  Besides accurately portraying the cars, Gotschke also captures the men.  Note Dreyfus's right arm.  Also the pose, facial expression, clothing, and light and shade on the photographer at the right. (Click on this image to enlarge.)

Melbourne Brindle, Illustrator and "Car Guy"

Ewart Melbourne Brindle (1904-1995) -- Melbourne Brindle, as he signed his name and was known by -- was a successful illustrator whose peak career spanned the early-1930s to the late-1960s when he chose to retire from commercial work. His Wikipedia entry is here, and more background can be found here.

His most characteristic illustrations, in my opinion, were done in pen-and-ink. A few of these are shown below along with works in other media. Some of the images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Brindle was basically a careful artist who seldom tried for flashy effects. But his illustrations were not necessarily static and dull (unless an art director insisted on him doing so). My take is that, at his best, his illustrations were pleasing and satisfying.

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As noted in the headline, Brindle was a "car guy." He is shown at the top of this advertisement with his Crane-Simplex car -- an extremely rare and valuable one and only part of his collection.

An illustration done in the later-1950s. Note his standard signature at the lower left.

That signature is on one side of his gravestone: the other side has the usual information.

A Packard advertisement from around 1946 featuring a probably fictitious Army Air Forces colonel who loved the Packard-built motors in his P-51 fighters.

A Packard ad from 1948.

Illustration from a 1949 Packard ad. In these advertisements for Packard, the illustration style of the cars and that of the backgrounds are different enough to make one wonder if a different artist painted the cars. On the other hand, Brindle was quite capable of rendering an automobile: plus, his signature is on the illustrations. By the way, the Packards are distorted to make them seem more sleek than they actually were -- a common advertising practice in those days.

An illustration of a 1956 Chevrolet.  Again, it is distorted by order of an art director.

Illustration of an early gasoline station.

Matson Line ad from 1946.  Yes, the ship is idealized.

Here is what I consider a characteristic Brindle illustration. It was made for an advertisement promoting the Territory of Hawaii in 1936. The view is of Honolulu harbor. At the left is a white-hull Matson liner. At the center is the city's famous Aloha Tower.

View of a Territorial University building from the same ad series.

Landscape painting of Block Island, Rhode Island that might have been painted after he retired.

The Naval Art of Henry Reuterdahl

Henry Reuterdahl (1870-1925) was born in Sweden and moved to the United States in 1893. As his Wikipedia entry mentions, he lacked formal art training yet nevertheless had a successful career as an illustrator and painter of naval and marine subjects. More information about him is here.

His illustration and painting style tended towards a flashy, free form of impressionism with a touch of other modernist influences. Much of this seems to be for dramatic effect rather than careful documentation of events he witnessed such as the early stages of the 1907-08 around-the-world cruise of the Great White Fleet.

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Illustration showing a U.S. battleship in a foreign harbor

Strange Ships - 1910
One source has the date as 1918. However, this might be related to the previous one even though their settings differ (one has high hills in the background, the other does not).

United States Fleet in the Straits of Magellan, February 1908
The around-the-world cruise: the sea is tranquil here.

The Fleet Passing Through Magellan Straits
And here, at the same location, it seems less so, though this is more of a closeup view. The empty area at the lower right of this print where Reuterdahl signed it gives the impression that the sea is dropping downwards.

Great White Fleet at Sea, December 1907 (Rear Admiral Charles Mitchell Thomas on USS Minnesota BB-22)
Another Great White Fleet illustration.

New York Harbor 1914 - H.S. Vanderbilt schooner Vagrant amidst commercial and military shipping
The white building is the Woolworth, the other tall one is the Singer Building: both are idealized, exaggerated. The point-of-view here is looking down the Hudson.

Naval Engagement - c. 1915, watercolor
This has a Fauvist feeling thanks to the exaggerated colors.  Again, the water appears to be falling off the frame.

Sinking of the Battlecruiser Queen Mary at the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916
The Queen Mary suffered a magazine explosion, broke in half, and sank. Only 20 of her crew survived. One is shown here on the hull of the ship near the center of the paining.

U.S. Navy recruiting poster - c. 1917

Convoy - c.1920 - USS Allen DD-66, SS France, USS Mount Vernon ID-4508
Here in a somewhat Cubist-Futurist vein are depicted camouflaged ships. This is not quite characteristic of Reuterdahl's work, but he is credited as the painter on the Internet site where it was found.

Air Patrol of the Atlantic - USS Edwards - c.1919 - watercolor
Another highly dramatized scene, though the North Atlantic can be vicious and destroyers are comparatively small and narrow.

Battle Fleet Returning to New York Harbor - 1920
From about the same viewpoint as the 1914 scene -- southern Hoboken or northern Jersey City, New Jersey, perhaps. The buildings are shown more accurately here. Even so, I have the feeling that Reuterdahl used some exaggeration: the river seems pretty wide in relation to the indicated size of those battleships.