Towards the End: J.C. Leyendecker

Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951) was a leading American illustrator for much of his long career. He produced more than 300 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, America's leading general-interest magazine during the first half of the 20th century. He also was famed for his advertisement illustrations for Kuppenheimer, a man's clothing maker and for Arrow collars and shirts. More background on Leyendecker can be found here and here.

His distinctive style featured strong, crisp lines and form definition along with hatched and sometimes crosshatched color overlays. A sense of his stylistic evolution can be glimpsed via this chronological gallery of Post covers.

Illustration fashions change, so Leyendecker's highly distinctive style became increasingly passé as the 1930s rolled along. Apparently his personality was changing during this time, which might have been a further career hinderance. A major blow was changes in the Post's editorial staff during the years around 1940. New editors and art directors eventually cast Leyendecker aside.

Gallery

Detail from art in the Kelly Collection
I photographed this at an exhibit of Kelly items at Pepperdine University a few years ago. Note Leyendecker's distinctive brush style where there are regular brushstroke-related gaps between overpainting and an underlying color. Also, the background is created using a broad brush that blocks in the color while leaving visible strokes and gaps in coverage -- another of his stylistic characteristics.

Saturday Evening Post cover art - 24 November 1928
Another example of his style during his time of peak fame. Contrasted are a Pilgrim Father from the 1600s with a 1928 college football player.

Illustration for Arrow collars - 1932
The models are Phyllis Frederic and actor Brian Donlevy. Here the brush hatching is less prevalent. Leyendecker would use it or downplay it according to his feeling for the subject matter. Apparently, he opted for sleekness in this illustration.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 15 September 1934
Hatching returns for this Post cover. For some younger or overseas readers I need to mention that the overburdened fellow is a railroad porter doing his duty for the fancy lady.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 21 December 1940
Exhausted mailman during Christmas rush: the last Post cover not dealing with New Year babies.

Saturday Evening Post cover - 2 January 1943
This was his final Post cover, a continuation of his New Year's baby series. Leyendecker hatching is almost gone.

American Weekly cover art for 25 May 1947 issue
Crisp lines and fabric fold definition are still in the Leyendecker spirit. But I cannot be sure if the simplified style was an attempt to adjust to changing illustration fashion or else that he was simply dashing this work off to meet a deadline.

American Weekly cover - 19 December 1948
If it weren't for the signature, there is little here to indicate Leyendecker did this.

American Weekly cover - 20 November 1949
A very late illustration, again somewhat distant from his signature style. The orange circle is an echo of a Post cover theme from the 1920s and 30s.

In the Beginning: Joaquin Sorolla

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) has regained a measure of the fame he enjoyed in his lifetime. For a summary of his life and career, click here.

Sorolla incorporated little of mainstream modernism in his paintings. On the other hand, his mature style was freer than what Academy graduates were trained in. As best I can tell, his training was Academic in sprit, if not in every respect. Regardless, his early major works dealt with themes and styles that could meet with Academic approval.

Gallery

Bathing Hour - 1904
This painting made when he was about 40 contains many elements of Sorolla's signature style and subject matter. The Valencia (probably) seashore, a boat, oxen in the water, naked children bathing, and an older girl or young woman in damp clothing.

Father Jofré Protecting a Madman - 1887
A number of his early paintings were either historical scenes or social commentary, themes he largely abandoned in his 30s as he found his true artistic vocation.

Selling Mellons - 1890
Around this time Sorolla painted several paintings with similar appearance and subject matter to this. He would occasionally return to genre scenes until they became a major theme in his Provinces of Spain series for Archer Huntington.

Another Marguerite - 1892
More social commentary. Dark scene in dark surroundings.

Kissing the Relic - 1893
He sometimes painted religious subjects.

The Boat Builders - 1894
Finally, near Sorolla's beloved seacoast. Still missing is the bright sunshine found in his famous works.

Walk on the Beach - 1909
I'm tossing in this painting to remind viewers of Sorolla at his mature best. This painting shows his wife and a daughter at the shore. It's one of my favorite paintings. To see it in person, all you have to do is go to Madrid and visit the Museo Sorolla housed in his former home/studio.

Walter Everett: Two Works in Progress

Walter H. Everett (1880-1946), a student of the great Howard Pyle, was an exceptionally good illustrator who had a couple of character flaws. One was an inability to meet deadlines, a trait that surely impeded his career. Another problem emerged late in life when he destroyed many of his works. Some assert that he got rid of what he considered lesser stuff, and there might be something to that idea because a number of fine paintings of his still exist.

I wrote about Everett here and here. The Kelly Collection holds an important Everett: a link is here. Armand Cabrera provides some biographical information here.

Cabrera's post is illustrated using examples mostly from an early phase of his career, before he developed his mature style. It is Everett's mature illustrations that astonish me. Fortunately, there are at least two examples of his work that seem to be unfinished because of their appearance and the lack of a signature. They therefore provide interesting clues as to how Everett went about building up his classic images.

Gallery

This is one of Everett's finest works to set the scene. Click on it and the others to enlarge.

For comparison, here is a finished (or nearly so) illustration with similar colors to the unfinished examples below. Some internet sites displaying this image state that the man is a soldier. From what I can tell, the setting is the American Southwest, most likely northern New Mexico. The man is dressed in riding or work clothes, not an army uniform.

Everett blocks in the image using lines and flatly painted areas laid over an undertone wash or scumble. He then works on background detail before tackling the foreground.

Faces and other key details are painted in the round, most of the rest being larger and smaller areas of flat paint.

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UPDATE (9 January 2016):
I'm wondering if the three illustrations immediately above were all part of the same project that got canceled. The subjects and color schemes are related. The illustration that seems finished has not been signed (unless a signature got cropped). Does any reader know exactly what we have here?

Guilty Pleasures: Noir Art of Glen Orbik

Glen Orbik (1963-2015) died of cancer all too soon. He was a talented artist who divided his time between teaching and creating superhero images and crime-noir paperback book cover illustrations (also working in some other genres). A short Wikipedia entry is here, and here is a biographical note on his Web site.

Like most of the rest of mankind's efforts, paperback book cover art falls mostly in the "competent" category, with some examples being truly lousy. And of course there are some artists whose work stands out, transcending what many might consider "trashy" subject matter. So I think it was for Orbik. The guy had a solid, painterly style along with the ability to create interesting dramatic settings and artistic compositions. I need to add that his book cover illustrations had to include space for the title, author's name and other elements, so this context needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating composition.

His web site lists the following illustrators as inspiration: "Robert McGinnis, Gil Elvgren, Dean Cornwell, Mead Schaeffer, Andrew Loomis, John Buscema... and a healthy dose of Norman Rockwell." For some reason he didn't note his teacher Fred Fixler, whose commercial work included paperback book cover illustration.

Orbik's style is characterized by strong, well-placed brushwork based on a framework of solid drawing ability -- yes, he did use photo references, as do most illustrators. Take a look.

Gallery

American Century No. 11

Automatic Detective

Azrael Annual No. 3

Batman: Shadow of the Bat - Commissioner Gordon and Poison Ivy

Broadway Nights

Chassis No. 3

Fifty-to-One

Midnight in Paris

Songs of Innocence

Wounded and the Slain

Marcel Rieder by Lamplight

Marcel Rieder (1862-1942) was an Alsacian who spent most of his life and career in Paris, as this brief Wikipedia mentions.

It also states that he started as a Symbolist, but by 1894 shifted to what I'll call a kind of "soft-symbolism" featuring beautiful young women seen by lamplight, often by tables set for dining. In some cases, the settings are interiors and in others the background is a lake or sea. As for the watery backgrounds, Rieder and his subjects have the good taste to be by lovely Lake Annecy in east-central France near the Alps or on the Mediterranean Côte d'Azur.

Rieder's paintings are pleasant to view. I prefer the outdoor settings because the large areas of blue serve as counterpoint to the smaller lamplit spots.

Gallery

Choix de bijou sous la lampe

Title unknown - woman watching dinner guest depart?

Jeune femme cousante

Femme lisante

Veillée en bord de mer

Rêverie au bord du lac d'Annecy

Solitude au bord du lac

Détente et rêverie après le repas

Celebrity Artists: Physicist Richard Feynman

My guess is that it is amateur artists who keep most art supply stores in business. And without that demand, there might be fewer makers of paint and equipment and prices of their wares might well be a lot higher. So let us not look down our noses at the unwashed amateur art masses.

I suppose I myself quality as an amateur artist because, while I have a college degree in an art field, I never sold any of my output. Then there are plenty of people without formal training who have sold their work, yet can be considered amateurs because they have other sources of income to deal with most of their living expenses.

A sub-class of this latter group is people who are famous for other aspects of their lives, yet found time to dabble in art. One example is Richard Feynman (1918-1988), holder of the Nobel Prize in Physics, amateur safecracker, percussionist, member of a Rio de Janeiro Samba band, teetotaling (eventually) barfly and friend of Las Vegas show girls, seeker of Tanna-Tuva, member of the atom bomb development team, student of Portuguese, and other intriguing exploits. His Wikipedia entry is here.

Background on his experience in drawing and painting is here. His part-time teacher was Jirayr Zorthian (1911-2004), biography here. An online collection of Feynman's images (which I used to illustrate this post) is here.

Considering that he at first felt that he had no artistic aptitude and that he was occupied by many other activities including his position on the Caltech faculty, I find his work surprisingly good. Of course, if I saw some of his pieces at an art show, I would pay them little or no attention if I was unaware of who did them (and he did sign most of his work with the nom-de-palette "Ofey" in order to create distance from his professional self).

Gallery

Dabny Zorthian - 1964
The wife of his teacher.

Nude from behind

Portrait painting - 1968

Portrait drawing - 1975
Sketchbook page. Feynman usually handled mouths well, but had trouble with eyes, as this and other examples here indicate.

Face of woman

Portrait of a woman - 1985

Equations and sketches - 1985
Interesting that some doodles are graphs. Despite his claim of lacking drawing ability before he took informal lessons, he had invented Feynman Diagrams, a visual means of simplifying computation of complex, asymptotic effects of photon transfers of energy from electron to electron.

Alfredo Ambrosi, Aeropittura Artist

Alfredo Gauro Ambrosi (1901-1945) -- Wikipedia entry in French here -- was not the most famous or best practitioner of Aeropittura, a late form of Futurism, but I thought it would be worth presenting some of his paintings here.

I posted on Aeropittura here and about Tullio Cruli, perhaps the best of the lot, here.

Gallery

Colosseo - Colosseum
Aerial view of Rome's Coloseum from the northwest.

Aero-ritratto di Benito Mussolini aviatore - Aero Portrait of Benito Mussolini, Aviator - 1930
Related to the upper painting of the Colosseum, but the city view is extended to around the Piazza Venezia where Mussolini's famous speech-site balcony was located.

Fiesta aerea - Aviation Meet - 1932

Prima crociera atlantica su Rio de Janeiro - First Trans-Atlantic Crossing, Over Rio de Janeiro - 1933
Italo Balbo, head of Italian aviation, led two long-distance formation flights across the Atlantic, the first to Rio in 1930, a later one to the USA in 1933.

Volo su Vienna - Flight over Vienna - 1933
This commemorates the Gabriele D'Annunzio-led 9 August 1918 Flight over Vienna, an exceptionally long-distance operation during the Great War.

Aero-ritratto di Gianni Caproni - 1938
Portrait of airplane designer and builder Giovanni Caproni.

Pronto per l'attaco / Canale di Sicilia, 1942 - Ready to Attack
A World War 2 scene.