Some Alphonse Mucha Drawings

Alphonse Maria Mucha (1860-1939) is best known for his Art Nouveau era posters. He also made historical paintings, the series of huge Slav Epic works. In addition, he designed objects of various kinds. For me, almost everything he did is interesting.

His lengthy Wikipedia entry is here.

I mostly show paintings in this blog. But for a slight change of pace, the present post features a variety of Mucha's Art Nouveau period drawings.

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A this 'n' that page.

Metal décor designs.

More designs.

A very preliminary layout study.

"Decorative Figures"

Many of his posters featured a circle as part of the design. This drawing includes a circle to aid in the composition aspect of the proposed work.

Study for Medea poster.

Medea poster.

An elaborate drawing.

Finally, a color drawing -- something apparently rare unless he was working out that aspect of a poster design (which this freestanding figure is not).

George Bridgman, Teacher of Anatomy Drawing

George Brandt Bridgman (1864-1943) was born someplace in Ontario (the links below are vague about just where) and spent most of his career teaching anatomy at New York City's Art Student's League. There are several books he authored and illustrated that remain in print.

A useful summary of his career is here, and his Wikipedia entry is brief but has a long list of artists who studied under him.

Those former students include: McClelland Barclay, Will Eisner, Lee Krasner, Andrew Loomis, Paul Manship, John Cullen Murphy and Norman Rockwell. For a while Rockwell served as his classroom assistant, as the first link mentions.  Bridgman was a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts  in Paris.

Below are images of his drawings found here and there on the Internet. Bridgman favored a structural approach to anatomy featuring masses and some geometry.

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Noel Sickles' Imagined War Scenes

Noel Douglas "Bud" Sickles (1910-1982) is perhaps best known for his 1930s work on the "Scorchy Smith" comic strip. Following that, he earned his keep as an illustrator. Some background is here.

Sickles was a very good illustrator. He could depict people, something competent illustrators of his day could be expected to do. But he also was excellent depicting vehicles of various kinds -- ships, cars, aircraft and military equipment. I discussed his versatility here

The present post features some of his illustrations from the early days of World War 2 that appeared in Life, America's number one image-based magazine at the time. As best I can tell, all the scenes below are the fruits of Sickles' imagination, but the details are realistic, showing uniforms, equipment and such. Click on images to enlarge.

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I wrote about this fine Life Magazine illustration here. Sickles made numerous illustrations for Life during World War 2, many with the subject of tanks and dealing with them. For what it's worth, I would not want to attack a PzKpfw IV armed with the tommy gun and other light weaponry shown in the drawing.

An anti-tank canon shown in a hypothetical African desert encounter.  I doubt that such an action took place, given that American forces did not fight in the open Libyan desert as the British did in 1940-1942.  If my conjecture is wrong, let me know in a comment. Also, the soldiers' helmeted heads seem a little too large -- a rare failing for Sickles. Perhaps this was a rushed project for him.

Here is a German Czech-built Panzerkampfwagen 35(t) stuck in a ravine while being attacked by partisans with Molotov Cocktails.  Again, the figures don't seem right. Clearly, he paid more attention to depicting the tank accurately.

From a 1942 Life article titled "Enemy Tanks are Vulnerable."

More diagram than a realistic illustration, this shows features of the German parachute assault on the Greek Island of Crete.

Finally, Sickles' contribution for a 5 March 1942 Life article titled "Six Ways to Invade U.S." Here Japanese are attacking Southern California. As best I can recall, Sickles seldom did night scenes. Interesting impressionistic feeling here. And the details of the mechanical objects are sketchy, another Sickles rarity. Perhaps he lacked reference material on Japanese tanks.

New Mead Schaeffer Book

Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980) is one of my favorite illustrators. I wrote about some of his works here, here, here and here.

Now David Apatoff, America's leading illustration maven, has a book about Schaeffer due to appear in July. The cover is shown above, and information regarding it can be found here. Of course I ordered a copy and eagerly await it.

As I wrote here, Schaeffer claimed that he was happy to move from his signature period-piece illustrations so as to portray contemporary scenes. My take then and now is that his early,  pre- World War 2 illustrations were his best. I suspect Apatoff agrees, because the book's cover art is from that earlier career phase and not one of his later works.

A few examples indicating Schaeffer's stylistic evolution are shown below.

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A Count of Monte Cristo scene, 1928. Interesting mix of thinly and thickly painted areas.

A 1932 illustration for Good Housekeeping Magazine showing a German scene.

He painted a number of Post covers depicting American military personnel in a variety of wartime activities. Here his style is less painterly -- and far less distinctive, though it might have been more commercially viable given shifts in illustration fashion.

A Post cover from 1953. I do not know the extent to which this bland scene was the idea of Schaffer or that of the Saturday Evening Post's art director.

Géo Ham, French Illustrator of Cars and Airplanes

Géo Ham, pseudonym of Georges Hamel (1900-1972) was a leading French illustrator of automobiles and, to a lesser extent, airplanes. The height of his career was probably the 1930s, as his production lessened as photography supplemented illustration during the 1950s and 1960s.

His English language Wikipedia entry is skimpy, so consider linking here to his French entry.

As can be seen in the images below, Ham chose to exaggerate shapes of cars and planes when they were depicted in action. However, he was capable of more representational depiction when he so chose.

For what little it's worth, I am not a big fan of the sketchy, exaggerated French style of illustration seen from the 1930s into the 1950s and even beyond. I think that Walter Gotschke, who I wrote about here, did a better job of depicting racing cars impressionistically.

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First, three examples of Ham's poster work at the height of his career -- for the Monaco Grand Prix race.

The cars are exaggerated, but recognizable.  The same applies to the backgrounds.

This is a 1932 illustration of a Hotchkiss participating in the Monte Carlo Rally (wherein cars drove from various points in Europe to the finish line in the principality). It is more realistically depicted, though its perspective is still exaggerated. Image via Christie's.

A 1939 poster study.  This shows that Ham could be accurate when the spirit moved him.

Bugatti Type 35 racer.  Here exaggeration is minimal.

Géo Ham even made some illustrations of other subjects.  This is of a restaurant at the 1937 Paris exhibition.

Showing a 1934 race between a car and an airplane.  I'm away from my reference material, so as best I can tell, both are Ham's inventions.

He also made magazine cover illustrations.  This highly distorted car seems to be a design he invented so as not to favor any existing brand.

In addition to posters and magazine covers, Ham illustrated advertisements for several French automobile companies.

Finally, a postwar example of his work, this featuring the 1954 24-hour Le Mans race. Image via Heritage Auctions.

Harold Sandys Williamson: Hard to Classify

Harold Sandys Williamson (1892-1978) was both a Fine Art painter and a commercial illustrator, but mostly the latter. As best I can tell from the limited number of images on the Web, he had no set, distinctive style. His Wikipedia entry is here.

For many years he was head of the Chelsea School of Art.

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Underground poster - 1924
Also something to do with Valentine's Day?

Holdenhurst - 1931

Imperial Airways, Croydon poster - 1934
Perhaps only a segment of a poster.  Croydon, south of London, was the city's main airport for passenger travel to Paris.  The airliner looks curiously toy-like.

Picnic - 1938
Different indeed, this highly-rendered scene.

Spray - 1939
Now for a puzzle.  This strikingly done work is shown in an image submitted by a gallery for the catalog of the 2017 exhibit "True to Life: British Paintings in the 1920s & 1930s" at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh.

Spray - 1939
Yet elsewhere on the Internet one can find this (slightly cropped) version featuring more natural colors.  I suspect that this is what the painting actually looks like, though the other version is also nice to look at.  Yet I still can wonder if the more naturally colored one might be a Photoshopped alteration of the sepia tinted first image.

Byam Shaw, Whose Career Was Ended by the Spanish Flu

John Byam Liston Shaw (1872-1919), known as Byam Shaw, was one of those competent British artists who I often write about here. According to his Wikipedia entry, his career began to fade by the early 1900s, so he turned to teaching at what became the Byam Shaw School of Art in London.

Besides painting, Shaw also did illustration. He died early in 1919 due to the Spanish Flu epidemic.

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Silent Noon - 1894
His early works were Pre-Raphaelite influenced.

Jezebel - 1896

Love's Baubles - 1897
Here his painting becomes slightly more mural-like or even poster-like due to the inclusion of some small areas of flat color.

Truly the Light is Sweet - 1901
Shadow areas seem influenced by French Impressionism.

The Boer War, Last Summer Things Were Greener - 1901
Her man was away in South Africa.

The Fool Who Would Please Every Man - 1903

Margaret Nettlefold before Her Dining Room at Winterbourne - 1904
Like many artists in his day, Shaw painted some portraits to earn money.

The Entrance of Mary I with Princess Elizabeth into London, 1553 - 1910

Britannia with lionesses
I don't have a date for this, but it's probably early Great War vintage showing the Empire coming to Britain's help.

The Call - 1917
An appeal to Canadian patriotism during the war.