J. Allen St. John and the Worlds of Burroughs

The illustration shown above is from the 1921 publication of "Tarzan the Terrible" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950). I remember it from my childhood. My father had come across a copy of the book which he read as a boy. I recall it being exciting and scary in parts: would Tarzan survive the scrape he was in?

The illustrations printed on slick paper were placed here and there amongst the text. I suppose I must have thought that they were okay, but incidental to the story. Still, upon seeing the one where Tarzan's Jane is being carried off by Mo-sar, recognition instantly clicked on and memories flooded in.

The Illustrator was J. (James) Allen St. John (1872-1957). A short Wikipedia entry for him is here and another short biographical note here.

St. John received formal art training and made a living painting portraits and other works until he began producing cover and interior illustrations for Burroughs' hugely successful adventure books about Tarzan, John Carter of Mars and others. His Burroughs work was not exclusive: he did not illustrate either the first Tarzan or first Carter books, but did most of the rest. Late in the game Burroughs, who liked St. John's work, brought in his own son to provide covers and other illustrations. In the meanwhile, St. John taught art and painted cover illustrations for the "pulp" magazine trade.

St. John's works were influential for other adventure and fantasy illustrators. However, since around the 1950s, most practitioners have taken the Frank Frazetta route of highly exaggerated depictions of humans. People in St. John illustrations were usually normal looking, though definitely fit.

Below are some examples of St. John's work for Burroughs books.

Gallery

Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar - cover art - 1918

AT the Earth's Core - cover - 1922

Pellucidar - cover art - 1923

The Chessmen of Mars - cover art - 1922

The Warlord of Mars - cover - 1919

My take? First, illustration fashions of the times need to be factored in along with the subject matter. Around 1920, cover art was usually done in oil paints, permitting the artist to create fuzzy edges and be temped to overwork the surfaces of objects (including people) being depicted. St. John did all this and reproductions of his paintings often strike me as having too-fussy brushwork, though this isn't very evident viewing the small-scale images above. Perhaps the actual paintings, being larger, look better. Nevertheless, this style of painting was acceptable for illustrators in the period 1910-25 when St. John was doing his best-known work.

On the other hand, I find most current fantasy illustration to be too mannered in a superhero groupthink vein. No serious improvement over St. John's pioneering work, in other words. A few contemporary illustrators seem to be operating in the middle ground between St. John and the Photoshop set. I need to give all this more thought and perhaps write more posts on adventure/fantasy illustration.

In the Beginning: Jean-Gabriel Domergue

Jean-Garbiel Domergue (1889-1962) claimed to be the inventor of the pinup illustration. Apparently he never saw covers of American girlie magazines of the late 1920s, but maybe he had another criterion for staking his claim. In any case, the image above shows his version of a pretty girl that had evolved by the 1940s; by that point, nearly every female face he painted looked pretty much like what you see. Skeptics can Google on his name and then select Images if you need more evidence.

If I'm sounding grouchy it's because I do not like Domergue's evolved, standardized image. What makes me even more grouchy is that some of his earlier work was pretty nice -- very 1920s. Shall we take a look?

Gallery

La danseuse du corde - 1925

Emmy Magliani poster

Pierrette au masque - 1928

Woman with Greyhounds - 1930

Germaine-Yvonne Frank, ballet dancer - 1931

Femme assoupie

Femme en noir a Venice

Cannes poster - 1939
Here Domergue's ultimate style can be seen emerging.

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.

Varieties of Railroad Travel Posters

This book about North American railroad company travel posters mentioned that early posters tended to feature locomotives, but by some time around 1915 the emphasis shifted to destinations offered by lines. Between these extremes must be a middle ground where voilà ! trains and destinations appear on the same poster. And voilà ! once more, there can be posters showing trains on their way to destinations passing by intermediate points of interest that the lucky tourist will be able to see if he rides the line in question.

This high-level theorizing leaves me breathless and my head woozy, so let's move on to viewing some examples.

Galllery

By Leslie Ragan for New York Central - 1938
Ragan created many fine poster illustrations for the New York Central. I selected this one because it features a locomotive to the exclusion of its setting.

By Walter Greene for New York Central - 1928
The New York Central railroad correctly boasted that it was the line that had the lowest level between New York and Chicago; competing lines had to deal with mountainous terrain in places en route. A 20th Century Limited would depart from New York's Grand Central Terminal and head north along the east bank of the Hudson River, crossing to the west side shortly before reaching Albany. From Albany it would proceed along the Mohawk River and then surmount a small crest near Utica to enter the Great Lakes drainage basin. From Syracuse through Buffalo and Cleveland to Chicago was a matter of traveling over fairly flat land.

The scene in the poster shows a train heading south along the Hudson at a point just north of West Point, where Storm King mountain looms on the river's west bank, a sight for passengers to enjoy if they were sitting on the right side of the coach. Storm King is certainly a large hunk of rock, but I suspect that Greene slightly dramatized it.

By Leslie Ragan for New York Central - c.1940
Here we find locomotives at a destination, Chicago in this case, with the Board of Trade building as the backdrop. Ragan depicts four locomotives, three steam powered and one new diesel engine (second from the left). At the far left is an ordinary non-streamlined locomotive. The engines at the right are steam powered streamliners; I wrote about them here.

By Edward Eggleston for Pennsylvania Railroad - early 1930s
Not a train in sight, but who would care about that if there was a lovely swinsuit-clad lass beckoning you to join her on the beach near Atlantic City's fabulous boardwalk? The Pennsy's main routes ran from New York to Philadelphia and then on to Chicago or St. Louis; to reach Atlantic City, one had to catch a spur line from Philadelphia.

In the Beginning: Haddon Sundblom

This post continues an illustrators' parallel to the series on early works by modernist painters.

The subject is Haddon Sundblom, who spent his career in Chicago and was highly influential in his day; many successful illustrators cut their teeth in the field while working at his studio. If you're fortunate enough to have a copy of the first issue of Illustration Magazine or its later reprint, the lead article deals with Sundblom.

In December 2010 Leif Peng had a series of posts on his blog dealing with Sundblom. The lead article, which dealt with his early career, can be found here. Go to the blog's archives for that month to access the related posts.

The source for Sundblom's early work shown in the present post was the Annual of Advertising Art, a yearly awards publication of the Art Directors Club of New York; the organization's present guise is here, and those awards are still being given.

Dates for the illustrations shown below are "circa" the year before the source Annual was printed because that was when the the work was probably published.

Gallery

Coca-Cola Santa Claus
For better or worse, these days Sundblom is best known for his Santa illustrations for Coca-Cola.

For Lincoln - 1924
This image was found on the Web; a black-and-white version was in the Annual of Advertising Art for 1925.

For Lincoln - c.1924
In the mid-1920s Lincoln had many advertisements using the general visual and content themes shown above. One factor that was not consistent was the artist doing the illustrations. Although Sundblom did some of this work, perhaps most were by Fred Cole. It is hard to tell which artist did any given illustration, because the artistic style is similar for the entire ad campaign, something surely imposed by the art director. What's not clear is whether the art director had this appearance in mind from the start or else liked what he saw in the work created by the initial artist and ordered it continued. In any case, that series was very attractive -- more so than Lincoln's cars of the time.

For Ford - c.1924

For Ford- c.1924

Illustration for unidentified automotive client - c.1924

For White Naphtha Soap - c.1927

For Camay Soap - c.1928
Yes, this was really done by Sundblom (unless the caption was botched in the Annual). The deviation from his usual style might be explained by the art director wanting an appearance in line with the simplified, poster-like modernist look common in fashion illustration in the late 1920s.

For White Naphtha Soap - c.1929
The original artwork was in color, but printed in black-and-white in the Annual.

For Packard - c.1930
In the late 1920s into 1930 Packard advertisements would have a scene of luxury painted by a well-known illustrator at the top of the page and an image of a car towards the bottom. This Sundblom illustration has been cropped on the right side because the page in the opened Annual curved towards the gutter and distorted the image I photographed; note some reflected light washing out the right section of the remaining image.

In the Beginning: Edwin Georgi

This post is part of a sub-series. The main focus of "In the Beginning" is painters whose styles changed dramatically from early in their careers to what they are most famous for. Here, I'm doing the same for illustrators.

The subject is Edwin Georgi (1896-1964) who is probably best known for glamorous ladies painted in a Divisionist manner: much of the surface is comprised of distinct brush strokes. In Georgi's case, these brushstrokes tend to be tiny and his colors intense to the point of being unnatural. The overall effect can be arresting, though from time to time I think he overdid things.

The first image below is an archetypical Georgi that qualifies as overdone in my reckoning. It sets the stage for the other images which I photographed from what was originally titled the Annual of Advertising Art, a collection of awards by the Art Directors Club of New York. (Details have changed, and the current incarnation is noted here.) Dates for the work he was doing in his early 30s are "circa" the year before the publication date of the annual in which his work appeared.

Gallery

For Saturday Evening Post - 30 July 1957

For H.J. Heinz - c.1927

For McCall's - c.1929

For McCall's, original in color - c.1929

For McCall's - c.1931

For Redbook - c.1931

For Crane Paper - c1932

For Chrysler Imperial - c.1932

For Chrysler - c.1933

Howard Gerrard, Military Illustrator

Some illustrators are generalists when it comes to their subject-matter. Others find themselves specializing, either through choice or by force of circumstances. One field that supports some specialists is military-related subjects. Back on 10 August 2009 on the 2Blowhards blog I posted this article on British illustrator Terence Cuneo who focused on railroads and warfare using a painterly style. And on the 3rd of that month I wrote about Frank Wootton who specialized in automobiles and aircraft.

A currently active British illustrator who deals with warfare and related subjects is Howard Gerrard whose style is also painterly, though its appearance differs from the others because they generally painted in oils and Gerrard often seems to work in gouache or a similar medium which produces a flatter effect.

A short session on Google turned up but a tiny amount of information about Gerrard. He has a Web site, but it's "under construction" and we'll just have to wait until the scaffolding has been removed and the Queen cuts the ribbon to inaugurate services.

The Gerrard information that I found is here on the site of Osprey, a publisher that focuses on short, focused, illustrated books about military subjects. Gerrard has illustrated a number of their volumes and is given credit on the covers and title pages.

In my opinion, Gerrard is the best of Osprey's team of illustrators, producing informative and visually satisfying images that both complement and supplement the text, diagrams and photographs found in a typical Osprey publication. The Osprey illustrations are based on the requirement that various parts of the images be indexed and explained on a following page. This meant that Garrard probably had to keep more elements in sharp focus than he might have were he able to focus on aesthetic considerations.

Here are some examples of Gerrard's work.

Gallery

Assault on Red October steel plant, Stalingrad

El Alamein battle scene

Sherman tank attacking German artillery

The three images above appear to be from Osprey books dealing with specific operations or campaigns in World War 2. As noted above, much of each illustration is in sharp focus though Gerrard was able to get painterly in a few places.

Clipped-wing Spitfires
This does not appear to be from an Osprey book and seems to be painted in oils or acrylics. It reminds me of Frank Wootton's paintings, but with a higher degree of accuracy -- Wootton tended to freehand his subjects rather than construct them using formal, architectural perspective methods.

Doolittle raider approaching Yokohama - 1

Doolittle raider approaching Yokohama - 2

These two images are details from an illustration in this Osprey book dealing with the famous 18 April 1942 raid led by Jimmy Doolittle against Tokyo and other Japanese cities. As you might recall, B-25 Army medium bombers were launched from the aircraft carrier Hornet in a daring effort that had a great deal of psychological impact for both Americans and Japanese. Historians have argued that the raid spurred the Japanese to attack the island of Midway, a turning-point battle that resulted in the loss of four of their aircraft carriers and many of their best pilots.

These images are scans from the book and don't show the subtleties you would notice when viewing the printed page. There is a good deal of painterly gouache here because the focus is on the B-25 and very little on other elements. I encourage you to examine a copy or even purchase one.

Update: Reader Richard Sullivan commented to inform me that the Stalingrad image is actually by Peter Dennis.