Ralph Pallen Coleman: He Stayed in Philadelphia

Ralph Pallen Coleman (1892-1968) carved out a respectable career as an illustrator while remaining a notch below others who were famous and often better known to the public than the authors whose stories they illustrated.

Could this have been because he spent his life in the Philadelphia area? Whereas Philadelphia might strike some readers as a backwater of sorts, for the first half of the 20th century and a while beyond, it was a very important place so far as illustration was concerned. That was because the Curtis Publishing Company was based there, close by Independence Hall. And Curtis' stable of magazines included Saturday Evening Post and Ladies' Home Journal, each having huge circulation numbers in their day. So being close to this source of work was no handicap for an illustrator.

Coleman's career is outlined here. The source mentions that one of his art instructors was the "difficult" master illustrator Walter Everett, who I last wrote about here. The link also indicates that Coleman drifted away from commercial illustration in the 1940s to producing religious illustrations, murals, and such in the later part of his career. I will deal with his non-religious art here.

Gallery

Blue Book cover - January 1921
One of the earliest works that I could find.

Story illustration - 1922
Somehow this seems to have been done a few years later than the date shown where I grabbed this image, but of course I could be wrong.

Story illustration - early 1930s
The date under Coleman's signature block is smudged, but the woman's gown and hairdo push this beyond the 1920s. The vignette format seen here and immediately above and below was popular with art directors in those days. Illustrators probably liked it too, because they didn't have to spend a lot of effort on backgrounds and settings.

"To Look Before You Leap" - American Magazine - February 1932
Here Coleman is using outlines and drawing rather than creating a traditional painting.

"An Atlantic Adventure" - Cosmopolitan - August 1934
Interesting combination of framed and vignetted art. I'm pretty sure that the white space was used for a headline and / or text in the magazine.

Home Arts cover - February 1937
This magazine dealt with sewing crafts, and so had a somewhat different core audience than the Post, Cosmo and such. Coleman seems to have altered his style to deal with this, quite possibly in line with the art director's wishes.

"Calcutta Adventure" - 1940
Yet another two-color vignette.

Motor Age cover - July 1944
Just because he was transitioning to religious art didn't mean that Coleman was a total prude.

Emil Nolde's Style Trumped NSDAP Loyalty

I include the tag "Political art" for this post about Expressionist artist Emil Nolde (1867-1956) not because his art featured political subjects, but because his political position failed to overcome Nazi opposition to "degenerate" (modernist) art.

He was born Emil Hansen in the the border area of Germany and Denmark, later changing his last name to that of the town near where he was born. Nolde got a late start in painting, seeking training when in his early 30s. He was a modernist, first influenced by Impressionism, but gave that style up to become an expressionist. In the early twentieth century he was associated with Die Brücke and then with Der Blaue Reiter, key groups in early 1900s German Expressionism.

Nolde's Wikipedia entry is here, and another fairly long account of his career can be found here. For Nolde's relationship to the Nazi party and its dealings with his art, a useful source is this book.

It seems that Nolde was a Nazi party member -- but of the Danish, not the German one. He was a strong supporter of Hitler, but the regime favored völkisch art (traditional in technique, featuring Nordic, countryside and heroic subjects, among others). Expressionism of Nolde's kind fell into what was by the late 1930s considered "degenerate" art by Hitler's regime, and a number of his paintings were pulled from state galleries and some included in a exhibit of modernist art considered worthy of scorn. So his Nazi affiliations well as support by some high in the party hierarchy were not enough to counteract his style of painting in the earlier years of his career. He retreated to the land of his birth and worked largely in watercolor during the late 30s and the war years.

Gallery

Printemps dans la chambere (Springtime in the Room) - 1904
This was painted not long after his marriage, so the subject might be his wife. The style is Impressionist, but with a hint of Fauve coloring.

Dance Around the Golden Calf - 1910
By 1910, Nolde was in full expressionist mode.

Spectators at the Cabaret - 1911

Crucifixion - 1912
He came from a religious background and painted some religious subjects such as the crucifixion of Christ.

Nadja

Verlorenes Paradies (Paradise Lost) - 1921
Adam seem miffed regarding Eve.

Frauenkopf mit roten Haar (Woman with Red Hair) - 1925

The Sea at Dusk
I have no date for this, though I think it might be a watercolor from the years when Nolde was in disfavor and spent most of his time in Seebüll, near the Danish border.

NOTE: The NSDAP in the title of this post refers to the National Socialist German Worker's Party, the German language version being commonly abbreviated to "Nazi." The term "national socialist" was intended to distinguish the party from international socialism, the leading generic leftist concept of 1920.

Earl Cordrey's Smooth Style Illustrations

Earl Somers Cordrey (1902-1977) spent his life and career in southern California aside from the 15 years (1927-1942) he was in the New York area, the heartland of American publishing and illustration in those days.

Biographical information about him on the Internet is thin indeed; the most I could find is here. A source containing a number of samples of his work is here.

Regardless of the medium he used, Cordrey favored the clean, very slightly simplified type of image that was fashionable in the 1930s.

Gallery

Young woman - 1936

Story illustration, Woman's Home Companion - 2 April 1937

Duraglas advertisement - 1941

Story illustration - ca. 1941

Mallory Hats advertisement - 1942
Cordrey illustrated for Mallory for several years, but the company was sold to Stetson in 1946 and the brand was essentially gone by the mid-1950s.

Story Illustration - early-mid 1940s

Collier's story illustration - 1944

Palm Springs publicity illustration
Cordrey must have moved to this resort area by the 1950s because he was busy with the local magazine as well as publicity work such as shown here.  His shift to a cartoon style is striking, but hardly unknown to illustrators intent on economic survival.

Charles Constantine Hoffbauer, Versatile Franco-American

Charles Hoffbauer (1875-1957) was a French artist who spent much of his career in the United States. A useful summary of his career is here. It mentions that he "enrolled at the École National des Beaux-Arts where his peers included Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Albert Marquet." After his army service: "In 1898, Hoffbauer’s first submission to the Paris Salon was awarded Honorable Mention, and the following year he became the youngest artist to earn a Gold Medal and be deemed Hors Concours -- a status he held for seven years."

So he got off to a good start. As might be expected, his early paintings were traditional in style. But around the time he turned 30, he adopted a looser technique that had Impressionist overtones when it came to color. But it might also be said that he was a tiny bit expressionistic in his handling of forms, especially when he was in his forties.

Much of his American work in the 1920s was as just described. But he had received a commission to paint Civil War murals for the Battle Abbey at the Confederate Memorial Institute at Richmond, Virginia (see here). This work was painted traditionally and was done both before and following the Great War which interrupted it, Hoffbauer returning to France to serve in the army. Later on, he worked in film animation.

I'm inclined to place Hoffbauer as a fine-artist whose work came close to illustration. Nothing wrong with that; most of the Masters fall into that category as well.

Gallery

A Masked Ball - c. 1901
An early painting, still under the influence of his academic training.

At the Ball - 1905

La sortie de l'Opéra - 1905

Dîner sur le Toit - 1905

In the Restaurant - 1905
A set of Belle Époche images.

Jeune femme à la lecture
A rather unusual style and subject for Hoffbauer.

German Prisoners
Painted during the Great War while he was in the army.

Broadway sous la neige, devant l'Hotel Astor, New York - 1925
Apologies for the blurred image, but it's the best I could locate.

Herald Square, New York
Other sources have titles mentioning rainy streets in New York, but Herald Square this is. The tall, dark building in the center is the Times Building and building at the right with the arcade is the Herald Building.

Metropolitan Life Tower, New York
The smaller tower at the left was part of the original Madison Square Garden.

Times Square at Night
The Times Building is on the left (we are looking south). The building with the Turkish and American flags is the Hotel Astor.

Spring: Stonewall Jackson reviewing his troops in the Shenandoah Valley
An explanation as to how Hoffbauer did the murals is here.

How Well Could Picasso Draw?

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), like Rembrandt, is probably still synonymous with "artist" for the general public. As regular readers of this blog probably know, I am not a Picasso fan. I never liked his work aside from a very few paintings. On the other hand, I have no problem with artists who are famous and financially successful in their own lifetime, something that applied to Picasso in spades.

From what I've read, it seems that his abilities were regarded with something like awe by artist friends in his early Paris days. That prompted the idea behind this post: just how well could he draw? After all, the ability to draw is an important artistic skill.

Below are some examples of Picasso's naturalistic drawings that should help indicate how well he could depict people when he put his mind to it.

Gallery

Femme assise dans une chaise (Dora) - 1938
To begin, here is a drawing of Dora Maar, his mistress at the time this drawing was made. I include it as a reminder of one sort of drawing he made later in his career. Some Modernist Art fans might insist that this is a marvelous drawing if one disregards accurate depiction and considers other qualities. But that is a separate matter from this post's focus.

The Artist's Father - 1896
Picasso was 15 or 16 when this painted sketch was made. Okay, it's not a drawing, but not a finished painting either. It does show that he was precocious. Very good considering his age.

Unknown subject, unknown date
Were I really diligent I might have tracked down the missing information. What matters is the quality, which seems to me is at the level one would expect from a good academic art student.

Self-Portrait - 1901
I like this drawing. It captures the 20-year-old artist without hard-edge detail: "suggestive," I'd say.

Portrait d'Olga - 1920
This is Picasso's first wife. It seems he first sketched in pencil and then inked it -- some pencil lines still show, especially near her nose and left eye. Anatomically correct aside from her fingers that seem over-simplified.

Olga au chapeau à la plume - 1920
Her head seem a bit small compared to the rest of her, but otherwise this is a competent linear treatment.

Mother and Child - from p. 28 of sketchbook 77 - ca. 1922
By this time, Picasso was in his classical phase where heads were inspired by Greek statuary and bodies were somewhat massive. An idealization, not really a depiction.

My verdict from the gallery above is that Picasso was quite capable of representational depiction. But this did not rise head-and-shoulders above what a number of other artists could do. He was a shrewd man and made a wise career choice by becoming a Modernist. Otherwise, he seems to have had nothing special to offer artistically.

Molti Ritratti: Iris Tree

Iris Tree (1897-1968) came from an established English family, and was well-connected socially and with artistic groups. Her brief Wikipedia entry notes that she was "an English poet, actress and artists' model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress." (The entry at the time I wrote this post includes a Modigliani painting said to be of Tree. I question this because, first, all Modigliani nudes look pretty much the same, and second, the image has long hair whereas Tree had bobbed hair at that time.)

A more detailed biographical sketch is here. Below are various portraits of Iris.

Gallery

Photo by Man Ray - early 1920s
Iris Tree had an interesting face that Man Ray captured nicely.

Photo: Lytton Strachey and Iris - ca. 1930
Perhaps taken at Ham Spray.  Compare Iris' figure with 1915 portraits below.

Iris and Dora Carrington - ca. 1930
Taken the same day as the photo above. The Wikipedia entry on Carrington is here.

Sculpture by Jacob Epstein
Epstein made at least three sculpture portraits of Iris.

By Vanessa Bell - 1915
Now for three portraits made in 1915 by central members of the Bloomsbury set. (Vanessa was the sister of the more famous Virginia Woolf.)

By Duncan Grant - 1915
Grant was the love of Vanessa's life and the father of her daughter, even though he was homosexual. (Bloomsbury relationships are extremely complex, and are touched on in several of the Web pages linked here.) This painting and the one above seem to have been made at the same sitting: note the setting and differing points of view.

By Roger Fry - 1915
Fry was a more marginal Bloomsbury figure, though he did have an affair with Vanessa. As with the two paintings shown above, Iris was about 18 years old when she sat.

By Adolphe Borie
I'm not sure if this was painted in America or Paris.

By Augustus John - 1920
In my judgment, John was a better artist than Bell, Duncan, Fry and Borie, so this is the best portrait of the bunch. He knew Iris since she was a girl.

Drawing by Augustus John
Another nice image by John.