This section is devoted to scholarly essays on illustration – including articles on individual illustrators, the history of illustration, and illustration collections and important movements in history.
Contact and Bombing were painted by Frank E. Schoonover as part of a series of four illustrations focused on the activities of American aviators and their ground crews published in the Red Cross Magazine during World War One (also known as The Great War and The War to
Standing with one foot on a mountain and one in the middle of the sea, the angel Gabriel sounds his silver trumpet, signaling the end of the world. Mankind’s saved raise their hands to be received into heaven while sinners are thrown into the fiery mouth of hell. This illustration was
“] I’m beginning this post with a request, please help me find where this illustration was published and for what story it was created. I’ve already benefited from assistance from a variety of collectors and enthusiasts in this search, but we’ve had no success. If someone can find the citation for this
In 1902, Century magazine asked Edith Wharton (1862-1937) to write a series of articles about Italian villas and their gardens. To that end, Wharton visited some fifty villas traveling around Rome, Florence, Siena, Genoa, in Lombardy and the Veneto. Many were closed to the public. Maxfield Parrish was commissioned to
After 1906, the American writer Edith Wharton (1862-1937) spent most of her time living in Paris. During World War I, Wharton made visits to military hospitals and the front lines, writing reports of her experiences for American newspapers. After the war she created her 1918 novella The Marne, a story of
In 1897 poster art was all the rage. Developed in the 1880s by the French artist and lithographer Jules Chéret (1836-1933), posters were art created in the service of advertising.* By 1892 the Century Magazine published the first American article on the new poster phenomena and Harper and Brothers hired
Edward Brewer was a Minneapolis born artist who trained first with his painter father, Nicholas Richard Brewer, and then in New York at the Art Students’ League taking the illustration class with Walter Appleton Clark.* In 1905, Brewer was in Minnesota to marry and returned to New York with his bride.
Jessie Willcox Smith (1863-1935)|New Year’s Baby, 1910|Cover illustration for Good Housekeeping (January 1925)|watercolor, gouache, charcoal, and colored pencil on board|Thanks to American Illustrators Gallery, NYC J. C. Leyendecker may be known for his yearly contributions to Saturday Evening Post covers of a baby heralding the new year, but others too have used the image of
Although not as well known as his older brother J. C. (Joe) Leyendecker, Frank X. Leyendecker was also an illustrator of great skill. [see also Exploring Illustration posting from September 17, 2009.] Their family immigrated to United States in 1882 from Germany. As a teen ager Frank was apprenticed to
What a difference there is looking at John P. Falter’s 1946 oil painting of Falls City. Nebraska at Christmas, versus The Saturday Evening Post cover it became. [Unfortunately I do not have an image of the Post cover to share, but you can get on the Curtis Publishing web site