Queen Elizabeth II: Multi Ritratti by Edward Halliday

Edward Irvine Halliday (1902-1984), biographical information here, is not well-known today, but had a long career as a painter of portraits and murals.

Among his portrait subjects was Queen Elizabeth II.

It seems that many British organizations desired having a portrait of her.  Not just a photograph, but a real painting made with oil paints.  The Queen had many duties, and surely could not find time to pose for every requested portrait.  So Halliday, for example, painted several portraits of her posed the same, but attired differently and with different backgrounds.  I suppose other artists did the same thing, though I wasn't aware of this until I was collecting a set of images of Halliday's works.

Locations noted following Elizabeth's name are organizations that commissioned the paintings or where they are to be found.

Gallery

Princess Elizabeth - drawing, National Portrait Gallery -  c. 1949
Nice job: note the light, shadows and reflected light.

Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, Britannia Royal Naval College - 1949
Phillip was only a Royal Navy lieutenant in those days.  Later he became an Admiral of the Fleet.

Elizabeth II, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool - c. 1955
Her head seems a trifle large compared to her arms and hands.

Elizabeth II, Guildford Guildhall - 1957
Here is an early version of the pose that Halliday kept using.  Possibly this was made during an actual sitting.

Elizabeth II, Guildhall Winchester - 1957
Same costume as in the previous image.  Same pose, of course.

Her Majesty the Queen, Southampton Mayor's Parlour - 1966
Same pose, but the rest differs.  Note that this was painted nine years later.

Elizabeth II with Latimer House in the Background, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom - 1966
Many 1957 portrait details are carried over to this 1966 work.

Maxwell Armfield, Tempera Painter

Maxwell Ashby Armfield (1881-1972) didn't always paint using tempera, but according to his Wikipedia entry, "In 1946 Armfield released the book 'Tempera Painting Today', published by Pentagon Press."  So he knew something about the subject.

The link also notes that Armfield attended the Birmingham School of Art, then a center of the Arts and Crafts Movement.  Which helps to explain his style and perhaps his favored medium.

Below are some examples of his work, the first several dated to provide temporal context, the remainder undated, but their dates might be inferred from the appearance of the dated ones.

I don't find Armfield's paintings very attractive or interesting, but others did, because some are found in important collections.

Gallery

Self-Portrait - 1901
He was around age 20 when he made this Arts-and-Crafts style painting.

Faustine - 1904
One of his better-known works.  Held by the Musée d'Orsay.

The Tower (Trees, Lucca) - 1905

Central Park New York - 1916
Armfield and his wife were in the USA 1915-1922.

Miss Chaseley on the Undercliff - 1927
The two flapper-style women at the left-center are among the most representational details in this stiff, mannered painting.

Jessie Lemont
I suppose the book cover might be of interest to certain cognoscenti.

Miss Molly Lumley in "Spades are Spades"

Music in New York - Homage to Johann Sebastian Bach
This hints of the Pre-Raphaelites, as do some images above.

Oxford Circus
From around 1910, showing the either the Central Line or Bakerloo Line Underground station.

San Gimignano,Italy
A poetic interpretation of the famous towered town.

The Coming of Spring

Pierre Mourgue, Fashion Illustrator

Pierre Mourgue (1890-1969) was an important French fashion illustrator.   Some biographical information is here.

Much of his work was published in Condé Nast's Vogue Magazine's French, British, American and German versions.  Examples are shown below along with other illustrations whose sources were not clear from Internet sources.

It seems that fashion illustration, along with its subject matter, follows its own set of fashions.  1920s illustrations tended to simplify human figures and clothing, creating flattening to various degrees depending on the artist or perhaps the art director.  In the 1930s fashion changed to free-style wash drawings, this persisting into the 1950s and beyond.  There also seem to have been some national differences, as Mourgue's 1920s cover illustration for German Vogue are more simplified than those he did for other editions.

In two words, Mourgue was both fashionable and versatile.

Gallery

Monsieur magazine cover - February 1921
Some of his comparatively early work was for a men's magazine.  Doesn't look like that guy on the right spent much time in the trenches around Verdun.

Illustration - 1927
Mourgue's illustrations sometimes used more shape modeling than was common at the time.

Illustration - 1928
Not a fashion illustration.

Vogue (Germany) cover - May 1928
An example of his simplified German style.

Vogue (USA) cover - 15 September 1928
Mourgue traveled to the USA a lot, according to the link above.  The background of this illustration seems to be a greatly enlarged New York Central Park lake.

Vogue (UK) cover - March 1929
All is flatly done save the car's steering wheel.

Vogue illustration - 1932
New decade, new fashion trend.

Patou dresses - c.1934
Original publication illustration, probably for French Vogue.

Vogue (USA) cover - 1 March 1935
The new fashion illustration style.

Vogue cover illustration - 1935
Another example.

Wallace Morgan - Black and White Illustration

Wallace Morgan (1873-1948, some sources have his birth in 1875) had a successful career making drawings for publication.  A Smithsonian link about him is here, his Wikipedia entry here, and a link to the Society of Illustrators is here.

Morgan's early career was as a newspaper artist, where speed was important.  Clearly Morgan was adept at composition and capturing realistic and believable detail.  This background is probably why he was commissioned as a combat artist during America's participation in the Great War.

Aside from the war, most of his subjects were High Society or nearly so.

Gallery

“Lovers and Lovers” - Collier's - March 3, 1917

"Now that you made her cry, I hope you're happy" - New Yorker - March 22, 1942

Saturday Evening Post illustration.

This illustration and the following ones lack source and date information.

Frederick L. Packer, From Art Nouveau to Political Cartooning

Frederick Little Packer (1886-1956), about whom little can be found on the Internet, was an illustrator, later a political cartoonist.

Available on-line illustrations are mostly of a 1920 series he did for the Vivadou cosmetics firm's Mavis series.  Several of those advertisements are shown below.

Also shown is Packer's editorial cartoon that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1952.

Note the extreme stylistic difference.  As it happened, editorial cartooning was probably a lot more steady source of income than advertising art for Packer, so I can't really blame him for making the switch in 1932 when the great Depression was at its worst.

Gallery

"September," part of the 1920 Mavis advertising campaign.

This is Packer's Pulitzer Prize winner.  Hard to believe the same artist did both.

More Mavis ads ...

Harry Morse Meyers, Illustrator

Harry Morse Meyers (1886-1961 or perhaps 1962) had a reasonably successful career as an illustrator.  Biographical information on the Internet is essentially non-existent, as best I can tell following some searches.  He was from Louisiana, but spent his career in New York.

Unlike more famous illustrators, he had no distinctive style.  But that might have been a virtue, because he altered his style over time to conform to illustration fashions, continuing to earn a living as an artist.  That is, he didn't get type-cast, thereby falling out of art directors' favor.

Images below are in chronological order so that you can see how his style changed to suit the illustration market.  Meyers was versatile, and skilled.

Gallery

Vogue cover - 15 December 1915

Sheet music cover - 1920

Ivory Soap advertisement (cropped) - c.1922

Indigo Dreams - Ladies' Home Journal - April 1923

Fabric advertisement - 1923

Ladies' Home Journal cover - May 1928

Life Magazine cover - December 1928

Coca-Cola poster - 1932

Collier's Magazine cover - 1942

U.S. Army Air Forces poster - World War 2