Art Fitzpatrick and Van Kaufman: Early Pontiac Grand Prix Illustrations

So far as I know when drafting this post, he is still alive and probably illustrating automobiles. That would be Art Fitzpatrick, born in 1920 or maybe a year or two earlier. Although he did automobile advertising art for several American car makers in the 1940s and 50s, his fame is largely due to his work for Pontiac in the 1960s and 70s in collaboration with Van Kaufman. Fitzpatrick rendered the cars and Kaufman provided the backgrounds.

I didn't notice a biography of either artist on a quick Google search. In place of that, some links dealing with Fitzpatrick's career and work are here, here and here. Of particular interest is this link which features an interview with him.

The present post features images created by Fitzpatrick ("AF" was the signature he used) and Kaufman ("VK") for Pontiac's 1962 and 1963 Grand Prix models. Fitzpatrick mentioned that the new (for 1962) Grand Prix model's name implied Europe, so he and Kaufman researched European backgrounds they thought would be suitable for advertisements. In one telling observation, he stated that their Pontiac illustrations were unusual for the times because the people in the scenes were not admiring the cars, but instead were doing other things that fit the context of the scene being shown.

I include 1962 Grand Prix illustrations because that was the first year for that model. The 1963 cars were based on a new body (note differences in the windshield), and I consider its styling especially nice; a thorough repudiation of the baroque styling excesses of the 1950s.

Gallery

1962 Pontiac Grand Prix
Shown along the Corniche high route along the French Riviera.

1962 Pontiac Grand Prix
Another Riviera setting, though I'm not sure where (Cannes?).

1962 Pontiac Grand Prix
France, again. Note the Citroën Traction-Avant in the background.

1962 Pontiac Grand Prix
Still in France, but again I can't pin down the location. Please comment if you know where.

1962 Pontiac Grand Prix
Big change: Back in the good old USA.

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix
This illustration might be from a brochure. Ditto the image immediately above it.

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix
One source has the setting as the canal along the Loire River.

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix
Might be Portofino. Note the sketchy style of both the car and background components. And the cyclist blocking part of the car: bold for a car ad then.

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix
In front of the Hotel de Paris in Monaco, down the hill a short ways from the Monte Carlo casino.

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix advertisement
On the Pont Alexandre III in Paris.

1963 Pontiac Grand Prix advertisement
That's Paris' Opéra Garnier in the background.

Cross posted at Car Style Critic

New Robert McGinnis Book

This is the cover of a recently published book about illustrator Robert McGinnis (1926- ) and his works.

And this is another book dealing with McGinnis by the same author that was published in 2001. I happen to happen a copy of each, so they will be dealt with in this post. A brief Wikipedia entry on McGinnis is here, and his Web site is here.

McGinnis is what is called an "all-rounder" in that he can depict almost anything well -- landscapes, cars, sailing ships. Also, by the way, lanky, sensuous, intelligent and fascinating women -- usually lacking in clothing. He painted hundreds of the latter because the major part of his career was doing cover art for paperback books, and a "good" cover from the standpoint of a publisher was a cover that could attract potential readers and entice them to buy the book. Since many paperback books deal with murder mysteries, romance, and such, McGinnis' subjects were usually women. He was very, very good at it.

McGinnis' women almost always are tall, long-legged and well endowed where it counts. They also have distinct personalities. None of the usual cookie-cutter generic pretty girl solutions for McGinnis: his women often had unconventional faces (for instance, Shere Hite was a frequent model early in his career). As the recent book mentions, in many respects McGinnis was doing portraits.

He generally used gouache or tempera on smooth-surface supports for the book illustrations and worked comparatively small -- about twice the size of the printed version, which is not large where paperback books are concerned.

The recent book has a large format, allowing readers to get a reasonably good feeling for McGinnis' painting style. It also had a Q&A with McGinnis that is brief, but interesting. He reveals what illustrator most influenced him when he was getting started doing book covers and tells who his favorite painter is.

One defect of the new book is that reference photos are nearly absent. Another is that nothing is said regarding his technique or approach when making book cover illustrations, though some study sketches are included. Moreover, McGinnis is a skilled colorist, and his thoughts on that would be very useful to learn. Admittedly, these matters are mostly of interest to fellow artists, and perhaps the book was intended for for non-artist McGinnis fans.

The earlier book has a few more reference photos, but they are tiny. And many illustrations and book cover images are small. Again, nothing much on how McGinnis worked. Still, the earlier book is interesting and useful for the likes of artistic McGinnis fans such as me.

Gallery

Never Kill a Client - cover art - 1963
Strange, interesting background here.  Did he draw it in pen and ink and then paint a wash over it?

Murder Me for Nickels - cover art (cropped at the bottom) - 1960
Again, plenty of interesting textural effects.

Girl on the Tower - Saturday Evening Post - 24 September 1960
At this point, even the Post was allowing a casual, partly unfinished style for story illustrations.

Slab Happy - cover art - 1973
A subject without a conventionally pretty face.  The new book includes a reference photo showing that McGinnis did indeed portray his model's face -- but enhanced her elsewhere.

Some Like It Cool - cover art - 1962
Did I just mention that McGinnis was a skilled colorist?

John Wayne in "The Searchers"
He didn't always paint pretty girls, even when doing movie industry work.

Guideposts magazine illustration
This hints at his landscape style.

The Return - cover art
A rather unusual McGinnis here.  Aside from the treatment of the church and hills in the background, it looks like he was suffering from Bernie Fuchs envy.

Brian Cook: Illustrator and Parliament Member

The poster-like illustration above is probably book cover or poster art by Brian Caldwell Cook Batsford (1910-1991), something apparently innovative in its day and now considered collectible.

A brief Wikipedia entry on Cook is here, and a better, much more detailed biographical sketch is here.

It seems that Cook was a bored student in school whose only interest was painting. His grades were so mediocre that university was out of the question for him. Fortunately, an uncle was a publisher, so Cook went to work at Batsford's, a firm he eventually led. He added Batsford to his name after leaving the RAF after World War 2 when he returned to the firm. Cook created many wraparound book covers for Batsford as well as posters for others.

On the side, he was a Tory parliamentarian and eventually was knighted.

Gallery

The front cover of a book I'm currently reading that deals with the London of 1932. Missing is the bloc containing the writer's name (Paul Cohen-Portheim).  The orange stripe at the right is not on my copy.

Here are examples of wrap-around book covers illustrated by Cook.

Cook didn't always do landscapes and cityscapes.

The Golden Years: John La Gatta

One of the most successful American illustrators of the 1930s was John La Gatta (1894-1977). His last name is also rendered as LaGatta, the way it usually seemed to appear in his distinctive signature block. But I see where his son has it as La Gatta, so I will use that version here even though I'll likely slip back to LaGatta in other posts dealing with him.

La Gatta was born in Naples, Italy, and came to America when he was a young boy. His art training was at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. By the early 1920s he had begun to establish a reputation as an illustrator of beautiful women, and from the mid-20s through most of the 1930s his career was at its peak. His earnings allowed him to live on the posh North Shore of Long Island and own a yacht. More about his life and career can be found here, here and here.

Unlike many 1920s vintage illustrators, and perhaps because in some sense he was a fashion artist, he relied heavily on drawing with charcoal or other drawing tools, adding color when required using water-based or thinned oil paint washes. Examples of this classic La Gatta style are shown below. Of course, he also used other styles and media when called for, and I might deal with that in another post.

Gallery

Fashion drawing - early 1920s

Life cover - 27 October 1927

Fancy dress couple - 1929

Life cover - 11 January 1929

"Great Gatsby" scene

Laros Lingerie advertising art

Ladies' Home Journal cover - March 1933

Ladies' Home Journal cover - October 1932

Young lady drinking tea - late 1930s?

Saturday Evening Post cover - 5 July 1930

"Milk and Honey" illustration - March 1933

La Gatta's iconic illustration

Otis (and Dorothy) Shepard: Billbord Masters

Otis "Shep" Shepard (1894-1969) and his wife Dorothy Van Gorder Shepard (1906-2000) were important figures in American poster and billboard design. Dorothy was trained at the California School of Arts and Crafts, whereas Otis ended formal education after the fourth grade and left home at age 12 to get on with life. His art training was informal, but he had plenty of natural ability along with an active mind that allowed him to exploit it. He got involved with billboards working at Foster & Kleiser, a major West Coast firm, rising to general art director in 1923.

Otis and Dorothy were married November 8, 1929, a few days after the Wall Street Crash, and went to Europe on honeymoon where they experienced first-hand modernistic poster designs. They carried that inspiration home and Otis applied it and the use of the airbrush to a poster for Chesterfield cigarettes (see below). This success led him to go free-lance.

In 1932, not long after he took charge of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, Philip K. Wrigley met Shepard and soon hired him as what amounted to design chief for the chewing gum company whose other interests included the Chicago Cubs baseball team and Catalina Island, near Los Angeles. Shepard was involved with everything from billboards to designing Cubs uniforms to creating architectural and design harmony for Catalina. Not bad for a man lacking formal education.

I wrote about Shepard here in 2009 on the 2Blowhards blog.

An excellent book about the Shepards was recently published. Its cover is shown above and its Amazon link is here.

A web site devoted to the Shepards and the book is here. An interview with one of the authors about the Shepards is here.

Below are (mostly) examples of their poster and billboard work.  Unless otherwise noted, the design and artwork was by Otis.

Gallery

Otis and Dorothy Christmas card - by Dorothy - 1929

Chesterfield cigarettes billboard - 1930
This launched Otis' national-level career as a billboard artist/designer.  Dorothy was used as the model.

Underwood typewriters poster by Dorothy
Besides images, Dorothy often did typography.

Doublemint chewing gum billboard

Doublemint chewing gum billboard
The Doublemint Twins theme was used for years.

Juicy Fruit chewing gum billboard

Juicy Fruit chewing gum billboard
An interesting feature is the mouth appearing on the slogan banner.

Norman Wilkinson: Sea, Sky and Other Stuff

Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971) was a master poster artist (I wrote about that aspect of his career here). He also carved out noteworthy careers in other fields of art, especially painting marine and naval scenes. His Wikipedia entry is here and another link sketching his work is here.

Below are examples mostly of his marine and naval paintings. Unless he was commissioned to feature a particular ship, his sea paintings featured a lot of water and sky, whereas ships, land and other objects usually occupied small amounts of art canvas real estate. That seems sensible, given the visual vastness of oceans and seas -- something Wilkinson was intimately familiar with, having served in the Royal Navy.

Gallery

Scene with ships
This exhibits a poster style, but I don't know if it was actually used for a poster.

Yachts off the Needles, Isle of Wight
A contrasting, more painterly style.

The 'Revenge' Leaving Plymouth to Meet the Armada - 1912
This is an illustration.

Hawker Harts of 601 Squadron - c. 1936
The sky is vast and the Harts are small.

The Pilot
Nowadays, pilot boats are usually a lot bigger and fancier than this.

Dublin and Holyhead - 1905
This is a poster illustration for the London and North Western Railway. I include it here because the style is closer to his marine paintings than the style he usually used for posters.

HMS 'Lion' Battlecruiser
This has a poster-like style.  Lion was Admiral Beatty's flagship at Dogger Bank and Jutland.  I'm guessing that this painting shows Lion on the way to her 1924 scrapping.

Fitting Out RMS 'Queen Mary' at Clydebank - 1936

HM Troopship 'Queen Mary' at Anchor in the Second World War
Thanks to her high speed, the Queen Mary was in little danger of being torpedoed by a German submarine.  Her companion Queen Elizabeth went straight to troopship duties before ever carrying commercial passengers.

Action off the River Plate, 13 December 1939, Pursuit of the 'Graf Spee'
The commerce-raider Graff Spee was a heavily armed large cruiser (and not really a "pocket battleship," as she was called at the time).  She was finally hunted down by three British cruisers and damaged to the point where her captain had her scuttled.

Japan Signs Her Own Death Warrant, Attack on Pearl Harbour, 7 December 1941

Coronation Review, 15 June 1953
I'm sorry to say that the next coronation review probably won't be as impressive as this one was.