Up Close: Mead Schaeffer (4)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980) when he was following the style that gained him success as an illustrator. Additional information on Schaeffer is here. Previous posts about Schaeffer in this series are here, here and here.

Featured here is an illustration for "Lucy of Limehouse: Greater Love Hath No Man -- or Woman" by Samuel Bertram Haworth Hurst in the August 1933 issue of Good Housekeeping magazine.

The source of the detail images is explained below:

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The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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"I want to see Nick."

The reference image from someplace on the Internet was the one I was familiar with, so it surprised me to find the Kelly original with subdued colors. I prefer the altered version. The detail image shows the bold, but more controlled brushwork Schaeffer was using by the early 1930s in contrast to some of his 1920s swashbuckler illustrations for books. By the 1940s, his style evolved to sedate, "just the facts, ma'am" artwork that was of course competently done, though not as interesting (to me, anyway) as his earlier work.

Hal Phyfe's Pastel and Camera Portraits

Hal Phyfe (1892-1968), according to this report: "Great Grandson of Duncan Phyfe, the iconic furniture designer of the early republic, Herold Rodney Eaton "Hal" Phyfe was born in Nice, France, to a New York society family. Trained as a sculptor in France and a painter in Italy, Hal Phyfe began pursuing photography an an enlistee in World War I..."

That link contains the most detailed biographical information I could find in a quick Web search. According to it, Phyfe did pastel portraits of Hollywood and Broadway stars after the war, then shifted to photography starting about 1926. Pastels were the fashionable portrait medium for movie fan magazine covers during the 1920s and early 30s, perhaps because smooth blending was possible so that faces of female stars generally looked more flattering than if done in oil paint. Plus, pastel portraits could be made relatively quickly and cheaply.

It seems that Phyfe was something of an eccentric who nevertheless was acceptable socially. And his approach to portrait photography of women was practical: scroll down the link for his hints to sitters.

As best I can judge, his pastel portraits were about par for the fan magazine cover course, lacking the pizazz of masters of that small art such as Rolf Armstrong. And his photos also strike me as being competent, but not in the Cecil Beaton or Edward Steichen league.

So that we have below are decently made period pieces, which make them interesting to me and perhaps you.

Gallery

Bebe Daniels - 1923

Gloria Swanson - 1923

Gilda Gray - 1926

Colleen Moore - 1927

Billie Burke
Phyfe was one of Florenz Ziegfeld's photographers by 1930, but he made this pastel of Ziegfeld's wife Billie Burke for what seems to be a Follies promotional piece or program cover.

Photo in perfume ad - c.1926

Clara Bow - 1932

Marian Nixon

Una Merkel

Up Close: E.M. Jackson (2)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with Elbert McGran (E.M.) Jackson (1896-1962) who painted covers for leading American magazines such as Saturday Evening Post and Collier's. Another post about Jackson in this series is here. Biographical information regarding Jackson is sparse, and this is the most detailed I could locate through a brief Google search.

Featured here is an illustration titled "The Customs Inspector" for a March, 1930 cover of Collier's.

The source of the detail image is explained below:

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The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with one showing detail. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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A reference photo I took

I noted in the previous post that Jackson's illustrations have a crisp look when reduced to publication size and printed, yet are fairly freely painted. That holds for the illustration featured here; I include it in this series because I like the way he did the faces. One difference from the previously shown Jackson is that the background paint here is not cracking.

Peter Mcintyre: New Zealand War Artist and More

I suppose I'm just a spoilsport or even a contrarian (tee hee), but so far as I'm concerned, there is little or no need for the war or combat artist. Hasn't been such a need since the the 35mm Leica camera appeared in 1925. For the 80 or so years before that, photography existed, but cameras were generally too cumbersome to be taken into combat. So artists were hired to record military scenes more or less when they occurred and some of them along with other artists chronicled wars after the fact.

World War 2 war artists often used a sketchy, watercolor based style that had been fashionable in advertising illustration during the late 1930s. Nothing really wrong with that. Except many of those artists didn't depict military equipment convincingly, so the combination of free style and sloppy drawing makes such depictions useless to me and perhaps others who care about accuracy.

One war artist who did a decent job was New Zealander Peter Mcintyre (1910-1995). Biographical information on Mcintyre can be found here, though the writer unnecessarily lets his modernist bias show.

Mcintyre strikes me as having been a solid artist who incorporated modernist simplifications in some of his works, but did not usually take them very far. From a technical standpoint, in a number of instances his oil and watercolor paintings have a similar appearance, at least when seen on a computer screen. In his war work Mcintyre does best depicting people, falling down a little sometimes when dealing with airplanes and tanks.

Gallery

Self-Portrait

Photo of Peter Mcintyre - 1958
Nice, strong self-portrait. Better yet, it seems quite accurate when compared to the photo that was probably taken later.

The Alert at Dawn, 27th Machine Gun Battalion in Greece, April 1941

La Mitrailleuse by Christopher R.W. Nevinson - 1915
Another comparison just for the hell of it. Below is Nevinson's iconic take on French machine gunners. Mcintyre might have been aware of the Nevinson painting, but his version is pretty static and undramatic. Perhaps that's the way it really was when he passed by the team.

Forward Dressing Station Near Meleme (Crete)
Mcintyre was a war artist for the New Zealand army which saw most of its action in Greece, North Africa and Italy during World War 2.

Major General Sir Bernard Freyberg, VC, 28 March 1943
New Zealand commander.

Wounded, Tobruk

Long Range Desert Group

Breakout from Minqar Qa'im

Bombing of Cassino Monastery and Town, May 1944
The source for this image states that it was done in oil paints.

Waiwera
A New Zealand scene done in watercolor.

Grey Day, Hong Kong

Up Close: Mead Schaeffer (3)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980) when he was following the style that gained him success as an illustrator. Additional information on Schaeffer is here. Previous post about Schaeffer in this series are here and here.

Featured here is an illustration for "Hide the Body" by Grace Sartwell Mason in a 1933 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

The source of the detail images is explained below:

* * * * *
The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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This image is from the Kelly Collection website.

Schaeffer often painted freely in his 1920s book illustrations. Here he is tightening up a little, though his brushwork remains strong and his paint thick. Also unlike some of his previous work, he treats his subject's face fairly carefully, blending some of his brush strokes and cutting back his use of impasto.

Marcello Dudovich: Italian Poster Ace

Marcello Dudovich (1878-1962), despite his Slavic last name, was Italian, having been born in Trieste. But then, Trieste sits next to the South Slav region formerly known as Yugoslavia, which explains his heritage.

For the first 40 years or so of the 20th Century Dudovich reigned as Italy's foremost poster artist. Reproductions of some of those posters can be found today.

Like his more famous German contemporary Ludwig Hohlwein, Dudovich made use of solid representational bases from which design-related simplifications or elaborations could be created to provide intended visual impacts. Unlike Hohlwein who began his career as an architect, Dudovich had a fair amount of formal art training. Moreover, his style evolved over time, becoming more simplified in the 1930s in line with fashions in illustration and fine art.

A detailed biography can be found here on a Web page devoted to Dudovich. The site includes a good number of examples of his art. Below are works shown there and found elsewhere on the Internet.

Gallery

Poster from 1905.

This was for a Naples store, 1907.

Dudovich was a contributor to several magazines, including the famous German Simplicissimus. The illustration shown here is from 1913. Due to the Great War and Italy's eventual participation on the side of the Allies, Dudovich had to terminate his relationship with the publication.

Much of Dudovich's work was related to fashion.

There were several variations of this Martini & Rossi poster. The artwork is the same, but captions vary.

This ad is for a hand-held, probably 8mm, movie camera. High-tech in 1923.

This seems to be a magazine cover. Motoring magazines in Europe often used to feature cover art advertising, so here we find a Fiat ad in 1930.

Dudovich also created posers for Fiat. This 1934 example is perhaps his best-known.

Another 1930s poster, this for cigarettes.

Our final example is a liquor ad from around 1940, to judge by the subject's hair style.

Up Close: N.C. Wyeth

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with N.C. (Newell Convers) Wyeth (1882-1945), a prize student of Howard Pyle. Additional information on Wyeth can be found here and here.

Featured here is "Long Line of Prisoners," an illustration for the 1927 Charles Scribner's Sons edition of "Michael Strogoff, A Courier of the Czar" by Jules Verne.

The source of the detail images is explained below:

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The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

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Reference photo that I took.

N.C. Wyeth is perhaps the best known illustrator from its Golden Age. His painting style varied over time, subject, and his goal at the time they were made. For example, by the 1930s he was spending considerable effort as a "fine art" painter, feeling that illustration art was inferior. However, when people think of Wyeth's work, they usually associate him with book illustrations he made during the 1910-20 decade. In those paintings he often used an Impressionist-inspired style based on short, distinct brush strokes of varying color over an area, where the top (and dominant) color strokes partly covered strokes of a different, sometimes contrasting color.

The illustration featured above was done later, and the Impressionist style is essentially gone. In its place is a flatter style. Wyeth still overlaid colors, but contrasts are less obvious and the short brush strokes are missing. Some outlining was present in his classic book illustration style, and that is continued here. Furthermore, this illustration is comparatively thinly painted; at the same time, illustrators such as Dean Cornwell and Mead Schaeffer were applying oil paint generously indeed.

Up Close: Dean Cornwell (2)

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post features illustrator Dean Cornwell (1892-1960) during the period when he was abandoning his original style for a muralist style that he was learning from Frank Brangwyn. I discussed the evolution of Cornwell's style here. A previous post about Cornwell in the present series is here.

The illustration featured here was part of a series for Bruce Barton's popular book "The Man of Galilee" (1928). More information about Cornwell's illustrations for that book can be found here.

The source of the detail image is explained below:

* * * * *
The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below is an image of the entire illustration coupled with my work. Click on the latter to enlarge.

* * * * *

Mary Washing Jesus' Feet - 1928

Cornwell's Brangwyn-based style features formal and informal selective outlining coupled with flat or modeled color areas within the outlines to create images. It is a kind of casual cloisonnism. Here Cornwell is using a good deal of pale blue along with darker versions of his subject's basic color to outline. What I have yet to figure out is the system for selecting outline colors in this and other works of this style by Brangwyn and many others active in the late 1800s and first decades of the 20th century. Does anyone know of a source for an explanation?

Up Close: J.C. Leyendecker

This is part of an occasional series dealing with detail images of paintings featuring the brushwork of the artist. Previous posts can be found via the "Up close" topic label link on the sidebar.

The present post deals with J.C. (Joseph Christian) Leyendecker (1874-1951), one of the most successful illustrators during the first four decades of the last century. His production of cover art for The Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine at the time, was roughly equal to that of Norman Rockwell.

I wrote about him here. Some other links dealing with Leyendecker are here, here, and here.

Detailed examples of Leyendecker's finished work as well as some preliminary studies are available on the Web, but I thought I'd toss in a couple more examples here.

First is an illustration called "Florist" for the Spring 1920 Kuppenheimer Style Book, Kuppenheimer being a mens' clothing company. The second is called "Woman Kissing Cupid," and was the cover art for the 31 March 1923 Saturday Evening Post.

The source of the detail images is explained below:

* * * * *
The Kelly Collection has what is probably the outstanding holding of American illustration art by private individuals (not organizations). I was able to view part of it at The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California towards the end of a January 12 - March 31, 2013 exhibition run. The collection concentrates on illustration art created roughly 1890-1935 and one of its purposes is to further knowledge and appreciation of illustration from that era.

Non-flash photography was allowed, so I took a large number of high-resolution photos of segments of those original works. This was to reference the artists' techniques in a manner not always easy to obtain from printed reproductions. (However, the exhibition catalog does feature a few large-scale detail reproductions.)

I thought that readers of this blog might also be interested in seeing the brushwork of master illustrators up close to increase their understanding of how the artists worked and perhaps to serve as inspiration for their own painting if they too are artists.

Below are images of entire illustrations coupled with my detail photos. Click on the latter to enlarge.

* * * * *

This image is from the Kelly Collection website.

This image is from the Kelly Collection website.

Leyendecker's style was unique to the point that other artists almost never dared to imitate it. It has been commented on by many observers, so I have no strong reason to add to such commentary at this point other than to say that I always found his work fascinating. My main reason for posting this is to note that the 1920 painting is showing cracking whereas the 1923 work, like most other Leyendeckers I'm aware of, seems to be in good shape.

Ludwig Hohlwein: Poster Illustration Master

Ludwig Hohlwein (1874-1949) in my opinion was one of the greatest poster illustrators, ever. He also was one of the better poster designers of the first half of the 20th century, though in this respect he was outshone by the likes of A.M. Cassandre and others.

Hohlwein had a distinctive style, usually using the notoriously difficult (for me, anyway) watercolor medium often in flat, overlapping areas to build up images.

The quality of his work was such that his political leanings are usually ignored or downplayed by writers and critics. Critics are more likely to bring up the politics of leftist German artists such as George Grosz and John Heartfield, though seldom in a negative way. With Hohlwein, negativity would be easy to introduce, yet his work was so good that, like the case of fashion designer Coco Chanel, his views and activities are viewed with a blind eye. For example, this politically liberal artist/blogger simply enthuses about how good an artist Hohlwein was.

And what was Hohlwein's political dark side? Well, you see, he was a Nazi. A member of the party once Hitler took over Germany in 1933. Before that, he created posters in support of the Kaiser's war effort. After the Great War he did posters supporting the anti-leftist Stahlhelm (steel helmet) paramilitary organization. However, it should be noted that his political posters were "positive" in that they supported the regime without negative depictions of the regime's enemies. In other words, so far as I know, Hohlwein never created an antisemitic poster. Grosz and Heartfield, on the other hand, went to great lengths to do negative portrayals of what they despised rather than showing the presumed positive joys of a risen proletariat.

The most detailed biographical information I could find on the Web is here. And his German Wikipedia entry mentions that he was forbidden to pursue his profession until February 1946, about nine months after Germany's defeat in World War 2. So presumably the Allies noted his general support of the Hitler regime, but could find no direct connection to its negative deeds.

I begin the examples of Hohlwein's work, below, with a few of his regime-supporting works to show what they looked like. Then I include a number of the posters he made for advertisers, these being what gained him his fame.

Gallery

This encourages youth to join the Stahlhelm youth organization.

Advertising the Union of German Maidens, an arm of the Hitler Youth.

The lower red caption asserts "We are those who guarantee the future."

A 1912 poster for Audi automobiles. Around this time Hohlwein included large patterned areas in some of his posters.  Also note the Coles Phillips color dropout style.

Advertising gentlemens' clothing. Note Hohlwein's artistic license where the two men are lighted from opposite directions.

A coffee ad.

One of Hohlwein's best-known posters, this for Casanova cigarettes. Note the way the woman's face is rendered.

For a fashion event.

High-fashion perfume.

"Summer in Germany means splendid holidays!"

Advertising sport hats.

Urging women to wear jewelry.