John Falter: Major Post Cover Illustrator

If doing paintings for Saturday Evening Post covers marked the zenith of an illustrator's professional career, then John Falter (1910–1982) was near the top of that elite group during Ben Hibbs' time as editor from the early 1940s to the early '60s. That's because he painted more than 100 covers over a 20-year period. (The count varies. One source says 129, others claim upwards of 200. Regardless, he was liked by the Post and prolific.)

More information about Falter can be found here and here. A gallery of his Post covers can be accessed here.

Falter was one of those illustrators whose work was highly competent, yet lacked a strong personal style -- a trait that seems to be necessary for lasting recognition and, especially, fame.

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Early pulp magazine cover art. It shows more style than his later works.

Two World War 2 U.S. Navy recruiting posters. The one showing the aircraft carrier has factual errors that might have raised the hackles of a sailor, but probably went unnoticed by most potential recruits. (The carrier is a Lexington class ship, probably the Saratoga. The Sara lost those big 8-inch guns early in 1942, but the F4F fighter shown has insignia that didn't appear until mid-year. The Lexington was sunk in May of that year.)

Wartime art for a Pall Mall cigarette advertisement.

Falter could do abstract art, too.

This has the look of Post cover art, but a quick look at Google Images didn't turn up a cover. Maybe it's buried in the cover images link above.

Two representative Falter covers for the Post.

A 1960 Post fold-out cover showing New York's Grand Army Plaza at Fifth Avenue (at the the left) and 59th Street (foreground).

William Aylward, Illustrator of Nautical Scenes

William James Aylward (1875-1956) came from a Great Lakes shipping family, was a student of Howard Pyle, and usually illustrated stories with nautical themes.

Biographical information about Aylward is skimpy. Two sources are here and here. The Kelly Collection site deals with him here.

Having been accepted by Pyle as a student signifies Aylward's potential as an illustrator, which was fulfilled in most cases. I do include one poorly-done example below from late in his career.

Some of the titles of the illustrations shown below are truncated. Those lacking capital letters are conjectural titles.

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Coming to America

Contrasts - 1905

future airships? - McClure's Magazine - 1905

storm scene - Harper's - 1909

Surrender of the Guerriere - Harper's - March, 1912

Perry Transferes His Flag - 1913

Mystic, Connecticut - 1916

battleship - c. 1943
This looks like a North Carolina class battleship, though a number of things seems "off" to me. For instance, the ship is too foreshortened for the viewing angle. The North Carolina and Washington had long bows, so it's possible that Aylward used some artistic license to better fit the ship into a compositional scheme. In any case, the top of the hull is too low at the front (there's much more of an upwards curve on the actual ships) and the main turrets are more distant from the prow than is shown here. The foremast structure and, indeed, all the superstructure elements shown are seemingly too high and definitely too large compared to the main turrets. The problem here is that the perspective is a mess. The anti-aircraft guns mounted high on the superstructure appeared late in the war on the North Carolina, but by that time the foremast was much more cluttered than pictured here in its 1941state. I really have no idea why an artist as experienced as Aylward would let all this happen.

SS America Bringing Troops Home - c. 1945

In the Beginning: Edward Hopper

Some people laughed back in December 24th of 1956 when Time Magazine (it was an important publication then, with an actual raison d'être) featured Edward Hopper (1882-1967) on its cover. Hopper was derided as old-fashioned, somebody who couldn't get with the abstract expressionist program. As it turned out, Time's editors in those days were better judges of artistic worth than many of the rest of us (I too was a brainwashed modernist). Hopper, nearly 50 years after his death, is considered a very important American painter and exhibits of his work draw large numbers of people.

For details on Hopper's career, here is his Wikipedia entry. It seems that Hopper worked as an illustrator at first in order to make a living doing art. But as Paul Giambarba in his blog "100 Years of Illustration" suggested, Hopper really didn't seem to enjoy that line of work. Nevertheless, he kept at it into his 40s until he was able to fully transition to fine arts painting and engraving.

Many painters in this occasional "In the Beginning" series of posts made extreme changes in style from their early days to their days of fame. Hopper was not one of them. His illustrations were influenced by the needs of art directors, so we can't give them much weight when evaluating the early Hopper. But his non-landscape paintings definitely prefigure his mature style. Mostly they lack the later refinement and clarity.

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Chop Suey - 1929
One of Hopper's better known paintings to set the scene.

Couple Drinking - 1906-07

Le Pont des Arts - 1907
Two scenes from his Paris days.

Summer Interior - 1909
He later painted many such interior scenes featuring young women in isolation.

New York Corner (Corner Saloon) - 1913
This hints at later streetscapes.

Illustration for "Your Employment System" - July 1913
One of his nondescript illustrations.

Soir Bleu - 1914
I'm not sure what to make of this because it is so atypical.

Road in Maine - 1914

Blackhead Monhegan [Maine] - 1916-19
Hopper spent time in Maine and did some landscapes. His later, famous landscapes include structures such as houses and lighthouses.

Morse Drydock Dial magazine cover - May 1919
More illustration work. He had to keep at it well into the 1920s.

Great Ideas in 1950s Style

If you want a one-stop shop of 1950s style graphic design, I suggest the Container Corporation of America's advertising series called "Great Ideas of Western Man" that also embodied the now more or less defunct "middlebrow culture" of those days. Even the title now would be considered a thought crime in many colleges and universities in America and elsewhere.

A useful source of background information on the the series is here; it is well worth reading because it deals with how the series began, the people involved, the source of subjects and the marching orders for the illustrators.

The CCA ad series followed somewhat similar series from previous decades and continued until around 1975, but the greatest impact was in the early days, starting in 1950. Graphic style of the 1950s and for a while beyond often took the form of simple, flat shapes arranged in some sort of restrained clutter, and that's what we find here. The captions on the images shown below indicate the artist-designers, all of whom were prominent in the field.

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Herbert Bayer
Bayer was the art director, of sorts, for the CCA project.

Ben Shahn

Jacques Nathan Garamond

Lester Beall

Milton Glaser

S. Neil Fujita

Saul Bass

Clarence F. Underwood: Prolific Then, Unknown Now

Clarence F. Underwood (1871-1929) was born in Jamestown in western New York State, trained at the Art Students League in New York and the Académie Julian in Paris, returned to America around 1901, and then pursued a career in illustration.

That's just about all I could find regarding him.

But if you Google on him and go into Images, you will find quite a number of examples of his work. It seems that Underwood was prolific and appeared in leading magazines of his day, including the Saturday Evening Post, the top general-interest magazine for more than half of the 20th century.

I have to admit that I don't care for most of Underwood's work. The scenes he depicts are usually bland (though that might have been because of the stories he illustrated). His compositions aren't usually very interesting, either. While he could draw well when he chose to, often enough his brushwork was just fussy enough to counteract the drawing. From Google, it seems that he used gouache, watercolor or possibly colored inks a good deal, this and the vignette style he often used suggest that he worked fairly fast. Given the quality of printing during his 1902 - early 1920s heyday, it's possible that the reproduction process smoothed over some of the rough brushwork.

For a quick look at some examples of his work in addition to what is displayed below, click here. The images shown below are what I consider among the best of his work.

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Couple ice skating
Many Underwood illustrations deal with well-dressed couples. Apparently this is what the stories and art editors required.

Seated young women in overcoat
I think this is one of his best efforts.

Lady getting her hair arranged
When given the chance or when in the right mood, Underwood could be witty.

Elegant couple - Saturday Evening Post illustration
A nondescript painting with large amounts of dead space surrounding the subjects. Was some of that covered with print in the publication?

Couple in back seat of limousine
By the woman's hair style, I'll assume this is one of Underwood's later works.

Did Mead Schaeffer Dislike His Best Art?

According to the article on Mead Schaeffer (1898-1980) in issue No. 45 of Illustration magazine, he was quoted as saying in 1945:

"I longed to do honest work, based on real places, real people, and real things -- work expressive of normal human emotions and activities. So, I did a right-about-face, and have never regretted it."

This was in reaction to painting "dudes and dandies, exaggerated sentiment, artificial romance, and love withe the endless 'he and she' pictures."

The images above reflect this change in attitude. The ones below are some of what I consider his better work done prior to his epiphany.

There is little question that Schaeffer was satisfied with his decision to change subject matter and, as it turned out, his style as well. But while he seemed satisfied, what about his audience and, in my case, his fan base?

To me, Schaeffer's appeal lies in his style -- the way he composed his scenes and, especially, his painting technique; subject matter is secondary. So far as I am concerned, his work from around 1940 onward was competently done, conventional, and not interesting to look at in most cases. Other contemporaneous illustrators could (and did) do pretty much the same sort of thing equally well. Very few in 1925-39 could equal Scheffer's work. Feel free to disagree in Comments.

(I wrote about Schaeffer here. A brief Wikipedia entry is here. A David Apatoff take can be found here. There is more about him here.)

The Dieselpunk World of "donaguirre"

I have no idea who "donaguirre" is. He signs his illustrations "aguirre" and it seems that he's based in Germany (could he be originally from Spain?). And I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that he was trained in industrial design.

His website is a part of the Deviant Art site, and is difficult to navigate for casual viewers such as me.

Given all this, we have no choice but to drop searching for details about him and instead take a peek at the alternative-1930s universe he has created. Click on the images to enlarge.

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These "posters" help set the stage for aguirre's world. Imaginary countries and cities exist, though they resemble those of the 1930s. And don't miss the wry bits of humor: for example, note the "generous dental plan" appeal in the 1935 faux-poster immediately above.

Two more poster-like images, but of a different kind. Robert Heinlein fans will catch the reference in the book cover.

Fighter, HMS Aquarius, 1936
Design for a dirigible-based fighter plane.

Leaving Home Defence Perimeter

Malstroen-Zeppenfeldt, 1935 faux-poster for a weekend racing event

Nikkokan Task Force
Apparently the enemy is a Japan-like nation.

Rollout
A completed passenger dirigible leaves the factory.

Spirit of Distopia
Another plane design. This from the "Hugges" company, and a likely takeoff on Howard Hughes' H-1 Racer of 1935.

Racing Weekend