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.

Sex and Sanctity: The Temptation of St. Anthony - 2

In my previous post I featured a sampling of paintings about the temptation of St. Anthony made from the early 1500s to the mid 1900s. I stressed that most of the artists probably had a fine time dealing with the subject because they could include images of pretty (and usually naked) women packaged with a pious theme of self-denial for the sake of living as Jesus suggested.

It turns out that the subject was so juicy than some artists tackled it more than once. The present post features cases where artists painted two versions of the Temptation.

Gallery

By Paul Cézanne - c.1870

By Paul Cézanne - 1875-77
Poor Cézanne could barely draw, and in my contrarian judgment, didn't paint very well either. In the days before settling in on creating pre-Cubist landscapes he dealt with a variety of themes including St. Anthony.

By John Charles Dollman

By John Charles Dollman - c.1925
Dollman (1851-1934) was a British painter and illustrator (Wikipedia link here) I hadn't been aware of until researching for this post. The upper painting's nude woman strikes me as odd; I can't tell if Dollman left her not quite finished or whether the unfinished appearance was purposeful. The 1925-vintage painting has a crisply-rendered nude, but unlike so many other depictions of St. Anthony's temptresses, she is shown as passive rather than sexually aggressive.

By Lovis Corinth - 1897

By Lovis Corinth - 1908
Ah, Corinth! I wrote about him here in the early days of this blog. During the first part of his career he tossed a lot of what might as well be called pinups into his paintings. And he certainly did so when it came to St. Anthony.

Sex and Sanctity: The Temptation of St. Anthony - 1

St. Anthony was a hermit who lived around the year 300, abandoning his money and possessions to take up a life of self-denial for the sake of living as Jesus suggested.

While in the desert he was supposedly afflicted with torments and temptations to abandon his self-imposed lifestyle. Among those temptations were women because, apparently, Anthony had denied himself the pleasures of the flesh along with other features of normal life.

This subject proved to be catnip for many artists because they had the theme of extreme piety with which to wrap images of lovely, usually naked women.

There are lots of paintings dealing with St. Anthony's temptation, so here is but a sampling.

Gallery

By Joachim Patinir (figures) and Quentin Massys (landscape) - 1515-22
This is a pretty early depiction of St. Anthony being tempted. Note that the temptresses are clothed.

By Giovanni Batista Tiepolo - before 1750
By the time of the great Tiepolo, showing nudity was okay.

By Paul Delaroche - c.1832
Delaroche has the the gals really ganging up on the poor saint.

By Félicien Rops - 1878
Rops took the risk of having a lively cross-bound woman as the key temptation with the crucified Christ and the devil on either side of her.

By Jules Pascin - c.1911-12
Pascin, on the other hand, made do with a Cecil B. DeMille sort of crowd scene.

By Dorothea Tanning - 1945
Tanning, who died a few weeks ago at age 101, was a borderline surrealist and gave the scene a surrealistic cast.

By Salvador Dalí - 1946
Dalí, being Dalí, threw in a bunch of personal symbolism. And yes, there's a nude woman someplace.

Photo of Dalí at work on the painting
This obviously staged photo shows Dalí supposedly working on the painting shown above. True, here is a nude blonde model, but her pose is not what's in the painting. In any case, Dalí has already painted the nude, so why is the model still standing around?

By Domenico Morelli - 1878
The other images are in approximately chronological order, but I saved Morelli's for last because (1) I like it best and (2) I saw it a few years ago in Rome's Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna.

In the following post I'll deal with some painters who liked the subject so much that they did two versions of St. Anthony's temptations.

UPDATE: Please note the discussion in Comments regarding the Morelli image which seems to a photographic imitation of the actual painting.

Howard Pyle Exhibit Catalog Gripes

The Delaware Art Museum has an exhibit (November 12, 2011 – March 4, 2012) dealing with famed illustrator Howard Pyle (1853-1911). It opened three days after the 100th anniversary of Pyle's death.

The cover of the exhibit's catalog is shown above. If you can't visit the museum store, you can order the catalog here.

I have issues with the catalog. That's because it drifts a small way into the cesspool of academic political correctness which, in my possibly warped judgment, is unfair to both the subject and readers interested enough in the subject to fork over the $45 cost of the book.

First, the positive elements. I thought the chapter by illustrator James Gurney was especially informative, probably because he is knowledgeable about the history of illustration and understands the trade's practical aspects. As for the authors of the other chapters, I didn't at first know who they are because nowhere in the book is there any background information. Gurney is not identified either; I'm aware of him because I follow his blog (linked above).

Although there is some subject matter overlap, most of the chapters are informative, even the one dealing with Pyle and the Swedenborgian Faith that was related to some of his works.

One place that ruffled my feathers was a chapter titled "The Gender of Illustration: Howard Pyle, Masculinity, and the Fate of American Art" by Eric J. Segal. Some Googling suggests that this Segal is on the faculty of the University of Florida and has written about masculinity with respect to Norman Rockwell and the matter of race as related to the Saturday Evening Post magazine. "Gender" and race are two politically motivated academic obsessions of the last few decades, so I suppose Segal is doing a nice job of building his career dealing with those and related subjects. I regard this business of applying currently fashionable views as a yardstick for evaluating a past that was essentially unaware of them as both intellectually silly and potentially dangerous to the reputations of worthy historical figures. This chapter should never have been included in the catalog.

I also had a problem with part of the chapter "The Persistence of Pirates: Pyle, Piracy, and the Silver Screen" by David M. Lubin. Lubin's chapter isn't all that bad except where he takes several detours attempting to link piracy to late 19th century capitalists, a gratuitous gesture unnecessary to the chapter's subject. Lubin is on the faculty of Wake Forest University.

As for my overall reaction to the catalog, I would have preferred more larger reproductions of Pyle's art and a lot less "scholarly" analysis.

John Berkey Featured in Illustration

It's pile-on time. Illustration magazine just came out with its 36th issue which features ace illustrator John Berkey (1932-2008) and illustration-oriented blogs are already posting about the great event. So why not join in? After all, I too am a Berkey fan and wrote about him here just about a year ago.

The author of the illustration piece is Jim Pinkowsi who maintains a blog that has images of much of Berkey's work; the link is here. A Website by the Berkey estate is here.

Pinkowski's article has details on Berkey's use of casein paints, a medium I was never fond of. It seems that Berkey didn't use the paints out of tubes (though he might have early in his career), instead he mixed his own batches using raw pigments. Later he seems to have added acrylic binder to some of his mixes.

Let me propose two classes of classical illustrator (ignoring those using digital media for most of a given piece): There are those who paint using easels (Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker, Dan dos Santos, Greg Manchess) and there are others who work on a drawing board. Drawing board based artists tend to be commercial artists who use gouache, airbrush and other water-based media on materials such as illustration board, though a small (less than 0.5 meter, say) illustration can be done on a drawing board using almost any kind of medium and support.

Berkey was a drawing-board guy. And he was shrewd enough to realize that working close to the image could degrade the result; it had to be viewed from farther away because the final version usually would be reproduced at a smaller size than the original -- in effect increasing the viewing distance. Berkey's eventual cure for this problem was a mirror setup. His drawing board was reflected using a mirror placed above it to another mirror placed at a distance. This double-reversal allowed him to view the work-in-progress at a distance of about eight feet (2.5 meters) without having to budge from his chair.

Here is how the setup looked from the perspective of the drawing board. This image was scanned from the book whose cover is shown below.

Pinkowski's blog includes other images of this setup.

The Illustration article is of interest because it contains more than just a bunch of Berkey's space ship images, great though they are. A nice selection of other subjects can be found, demonstrating Berkey's overall ability and versatility.

If you don't see the new issue of Illustration in your local Barnes & Noble's magazine rack, go the the Illustration site linked above and order before it is sold out.

In the Beginning: Robert Fawcett

Up until now, the items I've posted on early works by artists dealt with painters -- mostly modernists who began their careers painting in a more traditional manner. But recently I've been doing a little research on illustration art from the 1920s and 30s and stumbled across some early examples of work by illustrators mostly known for their later styles. So I thought I'd expand the concept to include illustrators.

The main source for the present post is the Annual of Advertising Art, an awards publication of the Art Directors' Club of New York (its history is here). The first volume appeared in 1922 and succeeding volumes have continued to the present. I found a number of early volumes in the stacks of the University of Washington's main library and took photos of selected pages: these photos are the source material for the "beginning" art in this post. Ideally, I should have made scans, but that wasn't convenient so I hope the inferior quality of the images won't be held too much against me.

Illustration for Sherlock Holmes story
Above is a characteristic illustration by Robert Fawcett (1903-67), one of the most successful illustrators in his day. A number of items about Fawcett can be found on the Web, and here are links to blog posts by Charlie Parker, Leif Peng, and David Apatoff -- the latter wrote the text for a recent book about Fawcett that I reviewed here.

Note Fawcett's mature style in the image above and compare it to some of his early work below. I cast dates as "c.1929" and so forth; my conjectural date is for the year preceding the year the Annual in which the image appeared was published.

Gallery

Illustration for Rayon advertisement - c.1929

Illustration for Knox Hats - c.1929

Lesquendiu lipstick advertisement illustration - c.1929

Illustration for Cadillac - c.1931

Illustration for Cadillac - c.1931
Note that the depiction of the couple in this illustration is nearly the same as in the illustration below. I don't know which was created first, but Fawcett was able to leverage his effort and his art director apparently either didn't notice what was going on or else didn't mind it.

Illustration for Cadillac - c.1931

Fawcett was in his late twenties when he did the work shown above. To be included in the Annual of Advertising Art was a major feather in an illustrator's career cap, so the young Fawcett was no slouch even though these works are unrecognizable to casual Fawcett observers.

Keep in mind that he was building his career in those days, not maintaining it. He was experimenting with the styles of around 1930, creating salable works while evolving towards the classical Fawcett idiom.

Architectural Training: Penn in the 1950s with Louis Kahn

Richards Medical Research Laboratories, University of Pennsylvania, 1965, Louis Kahn, architect.
A while ago I stumbled across this book by Herbert Bangs (1928-2010) who was the architect and principal planner for Baltimore County. Bangs had an undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins, received art training in New York and then attended Penn, earning a Master's degree in Architecture.

The book itself gets involved in matters spiritual as well as geometrical bases of aesthetics, fields largely outside my ken. What interested me was his take on architectural training in the 1950s, when modernism was at high tide and postmodernism was waiting in the wings. Two factors (among others) fueling my interest: I took first-year architectural design while an undergraduate at the University of Washington, and I later attended Penn, though in a different field.

The following quotations are from pages 37-38:

On the one hand, the rational, scientific analysis of structure and space is what is taught, while on the other the work is evaluated and graded on the basis of so-called aesthetic appeal. When I studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s, this factor of aesthetic appeal tended to dominate the proces of design, even though its existence could not be logically or scientifically justified. The studio courses were, in fact, directed largely to refining what was considered to be a subjective and individual aesthetic intuition. To the critics [assembled to evaluate student projects], a design either looked good or it looked bad, and students were supposed to learn to recognize the difference by a trial-and-error referral to their own aesthetic sensitivity.

There was, however, no theoretical discussion of "aesthetics" itself, and what it might be, or, oddly enough, of beauty either, although that was presumably what architecture was about. Neither was there any unifying vision on the part of the various critics or masters that could relate the material, utilitarian-functional aspect of our work to the mysterious aesthetic sensitivity, or even provide some simple understanding of what the aesthetic sense might be. This was not the result of negligence on the part of the instructors; I do not think they ever considered the matter, or thought it necessary to do so. They simply assumed that the direction
initially established by the Bauhaus and the "Modern masters" was the right way to go and were content to swim with the flow. We students were also remarkably incurious and did not raise the question either, although in retrospect it is apparent that the issue is vitally important, even essential, to an understanding of architecture.

The idea that the practice of architecture was primarily a scientific and technical discipline seemed, without exception, to be accepted by all of our regular faculty members. Louis Kahn, for instance, who was just beginning to acquire a name for himself at the time, took his responsibilities as a teacher seriously, and met with groups of students in the evening to talk about architecture and what it meant to him. It appeared, from what Kahn said, that even the powerful geometric forms that he intuitively sought, and that made much of his work of lasting significance, were not valid in themselves, but were accepted only if they could be logically justified in terms of some utilitarian requirement.

This analytical, rational aspect of Kahn's thinking sometimes led to dreadful results when carried to conclusion....

[Visiting critic Lucio] Costa told Kahn that what he had been asked to review was not architecture, but something deadly, and destructive of the human spirit. Two attitudes were thus seen to be opposed: the logical, scientific attitude responsible for new and daring technological forms and the older humanism that was primarily concerned with enhancing the lives of those who would inhabit the buildings. Costa's remarks were not well received by the dean and the other jurors and he did not return.

And in a sidebar on page 38:

Kahn, even then, had completed a number of famous buildings. Modest and unassuming, he was completely devoted to architecture as an art and was venerated by many of his students. When I worked on a studio project under his direction, I was disappointed to find that he encouraged a slavish imitation of his own buildings, not so much from simple egotism as from an absolute conviction that his way was the only right way.