Review: Masters of American Illustration

Amazon says it won't be out until mid-August, but my copy arrived a few days ago. That's Fred Taraba's book "Masters of American Illustration: 41 Illustrators & How They Worked" from the publisher of Illustration Magazine (link here).

I'm pretty cheap, but bought the book directly from the publisher instead of Amazon because I want them to stay in the business of providing junkies such as me biographies of illustrators and examples of their work; direct orders provide a better profit cut.

In his introduction Taraba tells us that the book originated as 41 articles in a magazine called "Step-by-Step-Graphics" in the 1990s. At the time he was working at the Society of Illustrators, so had access to both written material and people who could supply information and insights regarding the artists, all of whom were dead by 1989 when the project started.

The book contains the text of those articles with the minor changes that 20 years of new information and author insights inevitably bring. Also new were "more than 50" images.

Taraba's magazine articles did not cover Norman Rockwell, Howard Pyle, N.C. Wyeth and a few other titans of the field because accounts of their lives and work had been the subject articles and books and therefore not worth repeating.

I'm pleased that Taraba did include some of my favorites such as Mead Schaeffer, Saul Tepper and John LaGatta. Also in the book are some illustrators I'm not familiar with such as F.O.C. Darley. Then there a few whose inclusion I question such as Margaret Brundage whose ability to depict human anatomy was well under par for a professional illustrator of her era. But she did sci-fi/horror magazine covers, and the quality her work met the lower expectations for that genre in those days.

The illustrations in the book are nicely reproduced. Each artist's section begins with a two-page spread where one page is devoted to a single illustration, and there are other large illustrations that help the reader get a feeling for the artist's technique.

Speaking of technique (a factor of the book's "How They Worked" subtitle), depth of information varies from artist to artist. No doubt this was largely driven by material available to Taraba, so I can't fault him. Still, there were cases when the topic was barely touched on. Others such as Harry Beckhoff's writeup had significant detail.

There were informational gems including the fact that several illustrators made frequent use of mixed media. Given my woeful art training in college, I had blithely assumed that oil was oil, watercolor was watercolor, casein was casein, gouache was gouache and so on. It is only recently that I've been discovering (poor, ignorant me!) that illustrators would use whatever tool it took to get the job done, be it a touch of pastel in a highlight or some pencil on bits requiring detailed work. After all, their work was reproduced, so discrepancy between original art and what magazine readers saw was both expected and exploited by a canny illustrator.

Biographical information is also patchy depending on the subject, so there were cases where I wished there was a little more detail regarding an artist's training and personal life. But detailed information is where Illustration magazine steps in; much or all of an issue can be devoted a single illustrator.

Despite the small criticisms presented above, my reaction to the book is very favorable. It's far better than the generally shallow, chatty (but by no means useless) 1951 "Illustrating for the Saturday Evening Post" by Ashley Halsey, Jr. which covers 62 artists who contributed to the magazine during the late 1940s. Taraba's text is indeed informative as are the illustrations. The book takes a proud place on the shelf I reserve for illustration.

In the Beginning: Franz Kline

If asked who is my favorite Abstract Expressionist painter, I'd probably usually answer Franz Kline (1910-1962). That's because he was bold rather than subtle, and I seem to retain a child-like preference for boldness over subtlety (I make exceptions, of course).

Poor Kline didn't quite make it to his 52nd birthday thanks to his bad heart. But from a strictly artistic-legacy point of view, his personal tragedy was possibly beneficial. That is, I'm not sure that he would have continued what he had been doing decades after Abstract Expressionism began running out of steam and fashion around the time of his death. What would he have done that would have been as aesthetically and commercially successful?

I'm not sure Kline's earlier painting would offer any clues, but I present some below as food for thought. They were grabbed off the Internet from here and there and I can't be absolutely certain that all of them were actually done by Kline. It's possible that there were misleading captions or misattributions, but this is hard to judge because Kline's early work is neither distinctive nor well-known.

Gallery

Hot Jazz - 1940

Palmerton, Pa. - 1941

Untitled circus scene - 1941

Entrance to Studio - 1947

Black on Green Red and Yellow - 1948

Greek-Letter Mansions

At first glance, they might remind one of an English country home or perhaps an exurban estate in America. In actuality they are a kind of college dormitory with enhanced social areas that can assume any number of architectural guises from Georgian to Greek Revival to Tudor to Modernist, depending on location and when the structure was built.

The subject is American college fraternity and sorority houses. The Wikipedia entry on the so-called "Greek" system is here, but I'll present my own overview before turning you over to the photos.

College secret societies began appearing in America during the second quarter of the 19th century. Secret societies featuring initiation rites and rituals were nothing new even then, but became a fad to the point where one fraternity (Delta Upsilon) was founded using the Old Switcheroo marketing principle of being non-secretive.

Another feature of college fraternities was the use of Greek words as names. Since those names were part of the society's secrets, they were publicly known only by the Greek initials of those names.

The first fraternities were for male students. In the second half of the 1800s, female Greek-letter societies emerged; they are called sororities, though some of the earliest ones (such as my wife's Kappa Kappa Gamma) still officially refer to themselves as fraternities.

With the advent of sororities and the socially more relaxed 20th century, the secretive aspect of Greek-letter societies waned and the emphasis shifted to making student life more fun through partying and other activities. This is reflected in the architecture of the buildings that housed these societies. Originally, the societies existed only in ordinary student living quarters, but this soon shifted to wood-frame rooming-house style buildings or converted row-houses for colleges in large cities such as Boston, New York or Philadelphia.

As membership grew from fewer than 20 initiates around 1910 to 30 and more by 1920, more and more purpose-built houses appeared. The typical layout was study rooms and sleeping porches in floors above street level. A basement might include a recreation room, a furnace and utility room, and perhaps a room where the secret chapter meetings were held. The ground floor would contain the kitchen, dining room, a large living room useful for social events such as dances and receptions, and perhaps a small library or auxiliary living room.

Membership in Greek societies grew rapidly through the 1920s with chapter membership averaging 35-45 at major colleges. The Great Depression slowed growth and weeded out weak chapters on most campuses. World War 2 resulted in the temporary shutting down of many fraternity chapters, though sororities thrived. Fraternities experienced a postwar boom fueled by GI Bill money and the lack of alternative housing as the nation shifted from wartime scarcity to a peacetime economy. Once the postwar surge ebbed, average memberships dropped to 50s and 60s. The late 1950s and much of the 60s was another expansion period where many chapters built new houses or, more typically, expanded existing structures.

Greek systems at most campuses cratered in the late 60s and 1975s, weaker chapters again being forced to close. By the 1980s, membership roles increased, reaching upwards of 200 for some sororities on West Coast campuses -- though 100 members is more typical maximum. Fraternity membership tends to be more variable. At the University of Washington, for example, fraternity chapters range from 20 to 100 members, the average being around 55.

So that's the overview. Let's turn to the architecture.

Gallery

Zeta Psi fraternity, University of Michigan - before 1900?
This building from (perhaps) the 1890s seems to be an early example of a purpose-built house with fancy touches that take it a step beyond the rooming-house type of facility common on most campuses until the 1920s.

Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, University of California - 1928
Berkeley is on the northern fringe of California's Mediterranean climate zone, so the Fijis went for an Italianate style.

Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, University of Oklahoma
I don't know when this house was built, but the staging of the photo makes it look a lot like a motel.

Delta Delta Delta sorority, University of Georgia
This calm, colonial style house is appropriate for its Georgia location.

Delta Upsilon fraternity, University of Illinois - 1926
The University of Illinois has an interesting collection of Greek houses. Here is a Tudor style example with plenty of half-timbering.

Kappa Sigma fraternity, University of Michigan
An old photo; I don't know if the Kappa Sigs still use it. But it's a nice version of French Chateau architecture that would be more at home near the Loire than in Ann Arbor.

Phi Delta Theta fraternity, University of Illinois - 1922
Tudor style, but symmetrical, this Phi Delt house looks impressive in the photo.

Theta Xi fraternity, UCLA
Many fraternity and sorority houses at UCLA were constructed in the 1930s and featured a clean version of Spanish Colonial architecture appropriate to the Los Angeles area setting. Theta Xi is one of the first houses one encounters walking west from campus to Greek Row.

Sigma Kappa sorority, University of Washington
This Norman style building was where my daughter lived while at Washington.

Psi Upsilon fraternity, University of Washington
For some reason I always liked this Psi U house despite the half-timbering being on the verge of overdone.

Sigma Nu fraternity, University of Washington
This building dates back to around 1914, a surprisingly non-traditional style for its time.

Theta Chi fraternity, University of Washington
From the same architectural firm that did the Sigma Kappa house above.

Theta Xi fraternity, University of Washington
Built in 1926, this is where I lived as an undergraduate.

Aha! So It Was Actually A Copy

Last winter I wrote about Disneyland and featured the national park lodge style Grand Californian Hotel.

Besides the decor, I included some photos of paintings that I assumed were done by Disney artists to enhance the early 20th century atmosphere of the place. This is one of the photos:

It turns out that the painting actually is a copy of this:

The Idle Hour - John Hubbard Rich - 1917

You can tell it's a (nicely done) copy because the patterns on the wall and Kimono don't exactly match and, more important, the copy doesn't have the artist's signature in the upper right hand corner.

Too bad the Disney folks didn't credit the source using a plaque or other device.

On the other hand, the Disney version is slightly stronger and less impressionistic. To me, this makes it a better painting than the original. (I know this was probably heretical to mention, but I can't help myself.)

Mackintosh Watercolors

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) the famed Art Nouveau era architect was better appreciated in Vienna and elsewhere in central Europe than he was in his native Scotland. The coming of the Great War which snuffed out contact with his admirers, along with the rise of what became known as International Style architecture, led to the collapse of his career, such as it had been.

He and his wife, the designer Margaret MacDonald, scraped by during the war and then, thanks to an inheritance from her mother, explored places to live that would be less expensive than London and better for dealing with her asthma. So they began an exploratory trip in 1923 that resulted in a move to the South of France.

From 1924 to 1927, when Mackintosh's cancer became evident, they lived on the Mediterranean coast in Port-Vendres which is about 10 miles (16 km) north of the Spanish border and not all that far from Salvador Dalí's stomping ground.

By this time Mackintosh had become a full-time watercolorist. Besides the coast, he frequented the nearby eastern tail of the Pyrenees with its combination or terrain and picturesque villages whose buildings must have appealed to his architectural sense.

Below are examples of this work.

Gallery

The Boulders

Mont Alba

Port-Vendres, La Ville

The Little Bay, Port-Vendres

La Llagonne

I've only seen reproductions and not originals. But what I see is pleasing. It pleases me because of the hard, faceted, structured look and the strong compositions (Mackintosh was an architect, after all). Not what one thinks of when the concept "watercolor" comes up.

Sir William Beechey: Forgotten Portrait Painter

I can't find him indexed at The Athenaeum or Art Renewal Center. In fact, I had never heard of him until I was browsing galleries in the Portland [Oregon] Art Museum and came across a portrait by him.

My ignorance nothwithstanding, Sir William Beechey (1752-1839) was highly successful in his day though overshadowed in history by his flashier contemporaries Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) and Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).

The Wikipedia entry for Beechey linked at his name above notes that he had 18(!!) children over a period of about 30 years by his second wife. As a demographer, I find this statistic fascinating: that approaches the maximum possible, even with two children perhaps having been twins. It has been years since I researched this, but as I recall, some women reportedly have had more than 20 births -- including some multiples per pregnancy.

As for his art, Beechey was certainly competent at portraiture, as the images below indicate. Had it not been for Raeburn and Lawrence with their greater painting flair, he probably would have been better known today.

Gallery

King George III

Lord Nelson

Miss Abernathy

Kitty Packe

Lady Beechey and Her baby

Kroghs: The Other Norwegians

If asked to name a Norwegian painter, the name of screamin' Edvard Munch is what most people would come up with if they could dredge up the name of any painter from that corner of Europe at all.

Given that mainstream art history of the era 1870-1914 is so Paris-centric, it's surprising that even Munch was able to elbow his way into notoriety. This is not a good thing because artistic talent isn't and wasn't genetically Gallic; excellent painters were sloshing their brushes in turpentine and leaning forearms on mahl sticks elsewhere, even in remote Christiana (as Oslo was named at the time).

Which brings me to the family Krogh, father and son (plus a lesser-known grandson who I'll leave out of this discussion). Both Kroghs were painters well known in their native Norway who married attractive wives who led frisky lives in other men's beds. Those curious for details can consult the following links, though I'll add a tidbit.

The elder and more prolific painter was Christian Krogh (1852-1925) who married affair-prone Oda (1860-1935) and begat Per (1889-1965).

I didn't know this until researching this post, but Per was a muralist whose most noteworthy work adorns the chamber of the United Nations Security Council. The mural was a gift from Norway to the U.N. and I wonder if the Norwegian Trygve Lie, Secretary General in 1952, the year the gift was made, had a hand in the transaction.

Per married Cécile "Lucy" Vidil (1891-1977) who went on to become the off-and-on mistress of the Romanian painter Jules Pascin (1885-1930) who dissipated himself, leaving his wife and Lucy to tidy up his artistic estate.

Now for a glance at the Krogh's art.

Gallery

Christian - Portrait of a young woman
I don't have a date for this, but by its look it likely was painted early in his career.

Christian - Oda - ca.1888
The wife.

Christian - 17 May 1893
Constitution Day celebration.

Christian - Lofotbrev - Letter from Lofoten - 1896

Christian - Women

Per - Grand Hotel Oslo mural - 1928
Click on it to enlarge.

Per - United Nations Security Council chamber mural - 1952

Per Krogh was part of the Paris avant-garde artistic social scene and, judging from the few examples of his work that I could find on the Internet, was one of those painters with realist leanings who added modernist-inspired touches to maintain credibility in his social milieu. Given the honors presented him in Norway, I hope there was more to him than the hack-work U.N. mural and the modernist-mannered one in the Oslo hotel.

Christian was better -- good even, though his choice of everyday subjects tugs against our tendency to evaluate paintings by the importance of their subject-matter.