Luke Fildes: Painter of Poverty and Royalty

Sir Samuel Luke Fildes (1843-1927) began his career as an illustrator, then moved into painting. He also moved from depicting poor or common folk to making portraits of members of the royal family. Plus, he seemed to enjoy painting portraits of pretty young women. If he did any landscapes or still lifes, they were a small part of the output of his career.

Filde's Wikipedia entry is here. He had one son who died in childhood, that event serving as the basis for one of his best-known paintings, "The Doctor". Fildes lived a long life, as did two other sons, Luke and Sir Paul.

Given that his art training took place before French Impressionism was revealed to the world, Fildes' style remained traditional, though some of his informal works done after 1900 feature more casual brushwork than what he used when depicting royalty.

Gallery

Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward - 1874

A Venetian Flower Girl - 1877

Venetians - 1885

An Alfresco Toilette - 1889

Fanny, Lady Fildes - 1887

Portrait of Venetia - c.1900

Edward VII - 1905

Carina - 1910

George V - after 1910

Self Portrait - 1911

Naomi - 1914

Adoration - no date

Some Collier's Magazine Cover Artists

Collier's magazine in its original form ceased publication in 1957 (a revival was briefly attempted a few years ago). But for much of its existence it was a major American general-interest publication, being second only to the Saturday Evening Post.

As such, it's covers featured many of America's leading illustrators, though not the Post's star Norman Rockwell. Below is a sampling of Collier's covers I assembled, each by a different established illustrator.

Gallery

J.C. Leyendecker
The United States' "Great White Fleet" was on its around-the-world cruise in 1907 where Japan was to be one of its stopping points, hence the Japanese naval ensign as backdrop.  Hostility was building between the countries, but the fleet's reception in Japan was cordial.  A curiosity is the 7 December issue date, given that Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Navy exactly 34 years later.

Henry Reuterdahl
Reuterdahl is noted for his portrayal of ships.  Here he depicts sailors, presumably on their return from the world cruise.

Maxfield Parrish

Sarah Stilwell Weber

Herbert Paus

C.C. Beall

Ronald McLeod
In the late spring of 1939, King George VI of Britain and Queen Elizabeth toured the United States and Canada.

Jon Whitcomb

Martha Sawyers

Chesley Bonestell
Collier's published a multi-issue study of space travel in the early 1950s.

Sarah Stilwell Weber: More Than Kiddie Covers

Sarah Stilwell Weber (1878-1939) or (1863-1935), both sets of dates are in various places on the Internet, was a successful illustrator during the first two decades of the 20th century. Her illustrations graced the covers and interiors of several leading magazines as well as books and advertisements.

Unfortunately, I can find little in the way of information about her on the Internet, though two sites dealing with her are here and here.

What little detail follows is gleaned from Walt Reed's "The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000." Reed and other sources I'm inclined to trust have 1878-1939 as her dates. She studied under Howard Pyle both at Drexel and in summer sessions at Chadd's Ford. Reed also notes her book illustration work and some advertising clients.

That being that, all I can do is present some examples of her work.

Gallery

Harper's magazine interior page - February 1903
Stilwell was hitting the big-time around age 25.

Collier's - August 1907

Collier's cover art - 17 March 1906
One of Stilwell's best-known works.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 19 January 1916
It seems she borrowed the general idea ten years later for Collier's rival, the Post.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 29 January 1910

Saturday Evening Post cover - 20 August 1910
Many of her covers used children as subjects.

Vogue cover - 15 October 1912
More leopard, this time skinned, and for Vogue.

Vogue cover - 15 June 1913
This seems to be unsigned, but Internet sites credit her with the illustration.

Collier's cover - 9 May 1914
A really fine illustration here.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 3 March 1917
The Russian-type costume was ill-timed, because the February Revolution (March 8-12, new calendar) occurred just after this issue was off the news stands, and Russia became more chaotic than it usually was in those years.

Towards the End: Juan Gris

Juan Gris (1887-1927) died young, not long after his 40th birthday. I wrote a "In the Beginning" post about him, but found too few images to illustrate it properly.

Biographical information on Gris -- born José Victoriano (Carmelo Carlos) González-Pérez -- is here.

It seems that Gris never quite abandoned Cubism once he was converted to that branch of modernist painting. The images below that concentrate on the last year or two of his life are mostly in the so-called Synthetic Cubism vein, though there are dashes of other influences such as the "return to order," a post- Great War introduction of classical themes by modernist painters such as Picasso.

Gallery

Portrait of Pablo Picasso - 1912
An example of Gris' early cubist art. Gris had some technical education and preferred a tidier form of Cubism than Picasso himself used. Gris would establish a geometry-based structure for many of his works. In this painting, note the parallel lines flanking the buttons on Picasso's garment. At right-angles to these are some background lines in the upper-right part of the painting. Also note the vertical and horizontal motifs in that area.

Harlequin with Guitar - 1919
Painted towards the end of Synthetic Cubism's stylistic run. Gris included guitars in many of his paintings.

Bananas - 1926

The Painter's Window - 1925

Guitar and Sheet Music - 1926-27
Three late paintings featuring a guitar along with various objects defined by straight lines.

The Goblet - 1927

Bunch of Grapes and Fish - 1927
I found this in the Athenaeum site in its Juan Gris grouping. It has plenty of geometric character, but doesn't look like other Gris paintings. Is it truly a Gris?

The Reader - 1926
A human subject with a cubist touch in terms of the shading pattern on her face. Plenty of Gris-type geometrized (is that a real word? ...well, you ought to get its meaning) background material.

Woman with Basket - 1927
A women painted the next year, but entirely different in spirit. She looks classical like other modernists had been painting in the early 1920s. Comparatively few straight lines here, mostly found on the basket and in its vicinity.

The "Lifestyle Illustration" Books

Besides the occasional biography of an important illustrator, illustration fans each year can find new books containing collections of illustration art. Some deal with an individual artist (usually one specializing in science fiction and fantasy book covers, it seems), others feature multiple artists dealing in a common genre -- again, often science fiction and fantasy.

Over the past few years Taschen has published many art books, including a series titled "Illustration Now." I don't own any copies because I don't like most of their content, being more a fan of 1895-1965 vintage illustration.

Speaking of which, there are now two books edited by Rian Hughes full of works by British and American illustrators:

Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s appeared in 2011 and Lifestyle Illustration of the 50s came out in 2013.

I find the titles puzzling. What the books contain are mostly full-color romance story illustrations that appeared in British magazines for women. Page after page is filled with beautiful women paired with handsome men in various situations related in one way or another to romance. This is pretty limiting, yet the illustrators were somehow able to introduce enough variety that I didn't notice any two pictures being identical. Along with this, a few fashion and even furniture/decor illustrations can be found; I suppose this tiny intrusion was taken to justify the "Lifestyle" part of the titles. I think a more descriptive title might have been "Romance Story Illustrations of the XXs," but maybe there were good reasons for not using something like that.

American illustrators' work is included because publication rights were sold following publication in American magazines. In that way, British readers got to see the likes of Coby Whitmore, Jon Whitcomb, Joe DeMers, Edwin Georgi and Lynn Buckham (who actually worked in England for a while).

David Roach, in his introduction to the 1950s collection, notes that early in that decade British illustrators' work lagged behind what the Americans were doing in terms of style and pizazz. He contends that the Brits had pretty well caught up with the Yanks by 1960. I agree that the cream of American illustrators noticeably outclassed the British for much of the 50s, and disagree that they had caught up by the end. The gap had considerably narrowed in my judgment, but hadn't quite closed.

The 1960s book is interesting in that, despite the romance story focus, the shift in illustration fashion to modernist designs where representationalism was degraded is clearly documented. By 1970 the silly succession to classical illustration was now (and remains) dominant.

Walter Beach Humphrey: Murals and Magazine Covers

Useful though the Internet is, sometimes it can be frustrating trying to locate information about artists and illustrators I wish to write about. And so it is with Walter Beach Humphrey (1892-1966). A brief Wikipedia entry is here, and a few more details can be found here.

It seems that Humphrey was an Ivy League guy, being a member of Dartmouth College's class of 1914. He then was at New York's Art Students League to complete his training under Frank DuMond. After that, he had a successful career as an illustrator and mural painter for the next quarter century or so. However, his career after the early 1940s is essentially a mystery to me for now, though he is known to have taught.

Humphrey's style was hard-edge, something of a necessity for mural work. Yet he was able to ease off ever so slightly, resulting in works that are not overly stark and held together well.

Gallery

"It's the thieving federals again" - story illustration
I'm guessing this was made around 1920, but can't be sure because the subject is historical, not contemporary, so I can't use dress for estimation purposes.

Saturday Evening Post cover 13 January 1923
A blurred image, but I include it to show that Humphrey did hit the illustration Big Time.

Liberty cover - 16 August 1924
Humphrey was one of the early cover artists for Liberty magazine.

Liberty cover - 17 October 1925

Liberty cover - 7 November 1925
Ever loyal, Humphrey hints that this scene has to do with a Dartmouth College football game (note the Dartmouth green uniform and the letter "D" on the girl's pennant).

Reflection - 1929

Memories

Scaring Mother

The Elks Magazine cover - July, 1931

Section of Dartmouth College mural
A useful background link to a Dartmouth Review article on the mural (controversial, especially for those practicing political correctness) is here.

Patriotic Montage mural - ca. 1943