Artists As Illustrators in Late 19 and Early 20 Century America

Home , Arthur Bowen Davies, Edwin Austin Abbey, Ernest Lawson, Everett Shinn, Frederic Remington, George Luks

Artists as Illustrators in late 19th and early 20th century America

Jay G. Williams

According to legend, there lived in ancient times a virgin by the name of Gwenfrewi, who was desired in marriage by Caradog, a prince of Cymru. His request refused, he attempted to carry her off by force. Gwenfrewi fled, pursued by the prince, who in a great rage struck off her head, which bounded down the hill into a vale to a church, and on the spot where it rested a spring of amazing capacity bubbled forth. Gwenfrewi’s uncle, St. Beuno, who was officiating in the church, rushed out, replaced the severed head, and with prayer, restored the virgin to life. Thus was Gwenfrewi Santes born.

Artists as Illustrators in late 19th and early 20th century America

Jay G. Williams

2014 Gwenfrewi Santes Press “Wherever the head rolls.”

2014 Gwenfrewi Santes Press c/o Jay G. Williams Hamilton College Clinton, N.Y. 13323

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Winslow Homer 7 Edwin Abbey 17 Childe Hassam 23 John H. Twachtman 33 Frederic Remington 43 Arthur Bowen Davies 55 William Glackens 65 Maxfield Parrish 73 John Sloan 81 Everett Shinn 91 Arthur Dove 101 George Bellows 109

Conclusions 123

Foreword

The pictures used in this work are mainly from my private collection though there are a very few scanned from Hamilton College library holdings. The intent is simply to introduce readers to the illustrative style and scope of the various artists. Needless to say, there are hundreds of illustrations not included in this book.

Footnotes and citations are at a minimum in this book because virtually all the facts provided are common knowledge, easily derived from Wikipedia or other sources on the web.

It should also be said that there are probably many other artists who might have been included in this work. Again what I have done is exemplary but certainly not exhaustive. I do believe, however, that the illustrative work of these well-known artists is not insignificant and may provide clues for understanding their painted works.

Finally, I must add that there are few, if any, conclusions in this book. I provide examples of illustrative work; it is up to the readers to develop their own conclusions.

Jay G. Williams

1 Artists as Illustrators in late 19th and early 20th century America

Introduction

Although, as we shall see, several great American artists were also illustrators, many art historians pay little attention to the world of illustration. Most textbooks on American art deal with architecture, sculpture, and perhaps photography as well as painting but scarcely mention magazine and book illustration at all.

The reasons are many-fold. If the method used was wood engraving, one learns immediately that there is an intervening step between the drawing and the publication. That is because the engravers have to do their work, a work that subtly interprets and perhaps changes the picture. This was also true of half tone pictures. There is also the problem of commercialization. Editors want pictures that will sell the magazine or book and the illustrator must conform to their wishes. The old saw is that illustration is just a way to make money but has little to do with art.

On the other hand, one must remember that the architect’s plan is also interpreted by the builder, that the photograph may be transformed in the darkroom and by the printer, and that all those pictures of paintings used in art text books are different from the paintings themselves. Size, texture, and sometimes color are transformed. Most people recognize the Mona Lisa, not because they have been in Paris to view it, but because they have seen photographs of the work that may not even have been in color. So, in effect, art history also relies upon illustration.

In any event, if one wishes to understand “Visual Culture” in late 19th and early 20th century America, one must pay particular attention to newspaper, magazine, and book illustrations. They not only tell us how people at the time dressed, celebrated, played, and loved. They also told people at that time how they should do those things, what was up-to-date and appropriate. Book illustrations often told the reader how to imagine the story. Pictures by Remington and others taught the whole world how to imagine the American West.

It is also important to note that most, though not all, illustrators also tried their hand at painting. Some were quite successful; some were not. For instance, Frederick Stuart Church (not to be confused with Frederic E. Church) is represented in several important museums while, as far as I know, Arthur Burdett Frost, another well-known illustrator, is not. In this compilation we will only look at illustrations by artists who are well known for their non-illustrative works of art. That is to say, we will include artists who would be mentioned in an American art course simply because of their painting or sculpture.

Before we turn to specific artists, however, it is important to think first about the place of art in 19th Century America. Both Britain and the European Continent had a rich tradition of art going back to ancient Greece and Rome. Much of it was supported either by the Church or by the king and the lords. In America, however, there were no kings or lords. The Church existed, but in a form that frequently rejected religious art as idolatrous. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were no art museums to speak of and only a few wealthy men who were interested in supporting artists. The result was that many men1 with a penchant for art either, like Benjamin West, moved to England or became portrait painters, travelling from one location to another to create what many people did want---a picture for the family home and records. Even that career as a portraitist eventually became somewhat tenuous due to the invention of photography.

Louis Daguerre invented a form of photography in 1837 and by 1840 the first camera was patented in America. Samuel F. B. Morse, among others, worked hard to make the camera a useful invention by shortening significantly the time needed for exposure. For many years, however, the equipment was still large and clumsy and quite unsuitable for quick action pictures. Moreover, it took most of the century before photographs could be readily printed in newspapers and magazines. That very fact was a great boon for many artists.

By the 1840s, American art also found a new direction in landscape painting. Painters like Thomas Cole, Frederick E. Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Kensett, Asher Durand, et al, commonly known as the Hudson River School, followed the lead of the romantic English painters, John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, to produce a vision of America that was both beautiful and unifying. This, they proclaimed, is our land, a vast and still uncorrupted wilderness. It was, however, difficult to reproduce such art in periodicals, for as yet illustrations were uncolored and small.

Another style of painting that developed in the pre-Civil War period was genre art and depicted how people lived in America in “the good old days.” Works by William Sidney Mount and George Caleb Bingham represent this sort of painting. When periodical illustration began in earnest, several artists such as Arthur Burdett Frost and Charles Reinhart carried on this tradition in printed form.

In the 1840s a major change occurred. English publishers came to the realization that illustrations sold newspapers and magazines. The problem was that steel engraving and lithography were useful for books but too time-consuming to work well for weeklies and monthlies. Wood engraving was o.k. but needed very hard boxwood and that did not grow big enough to produce full page illustrations. So the English publishers found what now appears like an obvious solution---they bolted squares of boxwood together to produce full-page pictures.

1 I use the word “men” advisedly for women, by and large, were not encouraged to pursue careers in art before the Civil War.

2 A white slip was painted on the blocks so the lines between them did not show. The picture was then drawn right on the blocks. Very soon the Illustrated London News came into its own.

By the 1850s the idea had spread to America, in part through the work of Henry Carter (who was known primarily through his pseudonym, Frank Leslie) and the era of the illustrated newspaper and magazine had begun. Suddenly there was a great demand both for people with artistic talent and for competent wood engravers who could actually create the engraved blocks for printing. That demand intensified in the 1860s when the Civil War began and newspapers like Frank Leslie’s Illustrated and Harper’s Weekly felt the need to cover visually the war both on and off the battlefield. Photographers, of course, there were---one thinks of Matthew Brady and his staff--- but their work could only be published after it was turned into wood engravings. Photographic illustration did not become common in magazines and newspapers until the 1890s.

Wood engraving dominated the periodical industry until late in the 1880s when half-tone engraving that used accumulations of small dots to produce a picture that looked much more like a black and white photograph, made wood engraving obsolete. Sharp lines vanished and were replaced by much more delicate shading. A new revolution had begun. More and more periodicals came into existence, sometimes for a few, brief years, sometimes with a much longer life-span. Here is a list of some of the illustrated newspapers and journals in which artists published their work. It is by no means complete, but it includes most of the major American periodicals of the time.

Illustrated Periodicals

1850s

Harper’s New Monthly 1850- Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion 1851-9 (became Ballou’s in 1855) Frank Leslie’s Illustrated 1852-1922 Harper’s Illustrated Weekly 1857-1916 New York Illustrated News 1859-1864

1860s Every Saturday 1866-1874 Harper’s Bazar 1867- Appleton’s 1869-1909 The Galaxy 1869 (merged with Atlantic Monthly in 1879)

3 1870s Scribner’s Monthly 1870-81 Puck 1871-1918 St. Nicholas Magazine 1873-1940 Harper’s Young People 1879-1899

1880s Century 1881-1930 Judge 1881-1947 Life 1883-1936 (humor) Ladies Home Journal 1883- Good Housekeeping 1885- Lady’s (then Woman’s) Home Companion 1886- Cosmopolitan 1886- The Ladies World 1886-1918 Scribner’s Magazine 1887- 1939 Munsey’s 1889-1929 Collier’s 1888-1957

1890s Vogue 1892- McClure’s 1893-1929 Saturday Evening Post 1897-1963 Everybody’s Magazine 1899-1929

By the 1890s new technology was developed and photographs began to appear in many journals. In some ways, this decreased the need for artistic illustrators, but it also made it easier to reproduce pictures for publication. In 1902, for instance, Frederic Remington was hired by Collier’s Magazine to create paintings that were then photographed and published in the weekly. It should be noted that Remington did not paint those pictures to be hung in a museum but rather to be published in a magazine. The published photograph is the final version of his work. That can also be said of Charles Dana Gibson’s line drawings. No longer was wood engraving necessary. His pictures were photographed directly and put in Collier’s too.

Along with photography eventually also came color. Although many illustrations remained in black and white, color was now an option. In other words the “Golden Age” of illustration had now begun. Literally hundreds of illustrators worked to produce the innumerable illustrations and advertisements that the periodicals demanded. Such works came in several different forms: 1. Paintings that were created as paintings but were photographed and used as illustrations. Several of William Merritt Chase’s pictures were used this way. 2. Paintings created to be photographed and published. 3. Line drawings and wood engravings not connected with any story of article. 4. Pictures created to illustrate a story or article.

4 5. Pictures created for advertisements. Some, as in automobile ads, may be realistic; others, as in Cream of Wheat ads, are much more imaginative.

In this book we will concentrate, for the most part, on periodical rather than book illustrations. We will also forego discussion of art in advertisements, for those are most often unsigned. We will proceed more or less chronologically, though one must remember that most of the artists mentioned were more-or-less contemporary. For instance, even though Winslow Homer was born in 1836 and John Sloan in 1871 and developed very different styles, they were, in a sense, contemporaries, for Homer did not die until 1910.

It should also be noted that after 1925 new changes began to take place. If you leaf through a Harper’s Monthly or a Scribner’s from, say, 1928, you will find many fewer illustrations. There still are some, but most short stories are now without them. Where there are illustrations, they are often provided by the author. Collier’s had moved to photography even earlier. Cover art, such as that provided by Norman Rockwell, remained, but there were simply fewer opportunities in the field. The Golden Age had begun to wane.

“Breezing Up”

Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

Winslow Homer was born on February 24, 1936 in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in nearby Cambridge. He was an ordinary student without artistic training, though he was taught how to use watercolors by his mother. His brother had gone to Harvard, but Winslow, who didn’t seem interested in such intellectual matters, was apprenticed to a lithographer in Boston named John H. Bufford and for two years worked on creating the covers for sheet music. He apparently hated the work and vowed that he would never again be “on the staff” of any company. Although he contributed many pictures to a variety of newspapers and magazines, he always worked as a free lancer and not as an employee.

Happily, when he left the Bufford establishment, the world of illustration was just coming into its own. The English had discovered the way to produce larger wood engravings by bolting blocks together to produce large, full-page pictures. This technology soon arrived in America and such illustrated newspapers as Frank Leslie’s and Harper’s and Ballou’s needed illustrators to fill their pages. Homer, now in his early twenties, became a major contributor.

In 1857 he published “A Boston Watering-cart” in Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, a periodical published in Boston (see page 8). Before long, however, he began to submit works to Harper’s Illustrated Weekly that was located in New York. Very soon, he became one of their frequent contributors, offering pictures of ordinary American life, as the next two pictures show (see pp. 9, 10). To be close to the publisher, he moved and opened a studio in New York City.

Most of his pictures, however, were not of the city but of rural life. In fact, he often spent summers outside the city watching and sketching rural life in a small town not too far

7 from Newburgh, N.Y. At the beginning of his career, very few of his drawings had anything to do with the ocean. He specialized in genre art.

Sept. 12, 1857 Homer “A Boston Watering Cart” Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion

Nov. 26 Homer “Fall Games---The Apple-bee” Harper’s Weekly

April 30, 1859 Homer “Mayday in the Country” Harper’s Weekly

November 29, 1862 Homer “The Army of the Potomac: A Sharpshooter on Picket Duty” Harper’s Weekly

In 1861, the Civil War began and that created special challenges for all the illustrated newspapers. They needed pictures of the war. There were photographers in the field, but noone had been able to figure out how to put their work in newsprint. In any event, even though he was not on Harper’s staff, they hired Homer to go to the front to capture what was happening with his pencil. The picture above is one of his contributions. Unfortunately, Homer became ill and had to return to New York. He then took to showing the role of women during the war, as the next picture shows.

When the war was over, Homer returned to drawing more genre pictures, of trapping in the Adirondacks and of fun on the beaches. Many of his best pictures were done in 1873 and 1874. His last picture illustration, of the battle Bunker Hill, was produced un 1875. After that Homer devoted himself completely to painting. It should be noted, however, that occasionally a sketch by Homer, often of the Civil War, does appear in publications.

July 20, 1861 Homer “Filling Cartridges at the United States Arsenal” Harper’s Weekly

December 24, 1870 Homer “Trapping in the Adirondacks” Every Saturday

August 15, 1874 Homer “On the Beach at Long Branch---the Children’s Hour” Harper’s Weekly

September27, 1873 Homer “Gloucester Harbor” Harper’s Weekly

June 26, 1975 Homer “The Battle of Bunker Hill” Harper’s Weekly

Edwin Austin Abbey

Edwin Abbey was born on April 1, 1852. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and began publishing illustrations even before he was 20 years old. He moved to New York in 1871 and contributed a number of illustrations to Harper’s Weekly. He also became the illustrator of several well-known books. In 1878 he moved to England to gather information about Robert Herrick, the 17th Century poet whose work Abbey illustrated.

In 1883 Abbey decided to settle permanently in England. He painted numerous pictures, including one of the coronation of King Edward VII, that were widely acclaimed. He was, in 1898, made a full member of the Royal Academy. He was also offered knighthood, but it is unclear whether he was actually knighted. Some say yes, but others argue that he wished to preserve his American citizenship and therefore did not accept the honor.

Certainly he never lost touch with his native land. His illustrations, particularly of Shakespearean plays, appeared regularly in Scribner’s. He also did murals for the Boston Public Library and for the Pennsylvania State Capital. Unfortunately, he was afflicted by cancer and died in 1911 before he could finish the latter work. John Singer Sargent worked on it, as did Violet Oakley.

Apr. 24, 1875 Abbey “Cotton Culture---Covering the Seed” Harper’s Weekly

Aug. 19, 1876 Abbey “Singing Seats in an Old-time Country Church” Harper’s Weekly

Apr. 6, 1878 Abbey “Evening on the Battery” Harper’s Weekly

June, 1883 Abbey “Faustus” Harper’s Monthly

Feb. 1893 Abbey “Comedies of Shakespeare: Twelfth Night” Harper’s Monthly

Mar. 1903 Abbey “Richard II” Harper’s Monthly Magazine Act III: Scene III

Frederick Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts on October 17, 1859. His father was a modestly successful businessman until the great Boston fire that totally destroyed so many businesses in 1872. As a result of the fire, Childe Hassam dropped out of high school and went to work, learning, among other things, the art of wood engraving. As a result, during the 1880’s he began contributing illustrations, particularly to magazines for youth such as Harper’s Young People and St. Nicholas Magazine.

One might think it demeaning to publish in a journal created for young folks, but Hassam was in excellent company. Howard Pyle, Thure de Thulstrup, William Rogers, and a host of others who published regularly in Harper’s Weekly also contributed a great deal to Harper’s Young People. The first two pictures offered here are from 1885 issues of that journal.

Illustration was not all that captured his interest. He began taking classes in painting in Boston and by 1883 had his first solo exhibition of watercolors. In 1884 he was married and before long the couple sailed for France where he studied at the Académie Julian. He did not much care for the “lockstep” curriculum offered there but was strongly influenced by the French impressionists. In fact, he was to become one of the leading impressionists in America.

His success as a painter, however, did not totally destroy his work as an illustrator. The last pictures shown here are from 1892 and 1893 and reveal how much he had developed artistically since the early 1880s. He became one of the most popular artists of that age, though his style was soon to be challenged by men like Picasso and Van Goth who were introduced to America by the Armory Show in 1913.

Hassam continued to create in his impressionist style until his death in 1935 in East Hampton, N.Y.

June 9, 1885 Hassam “It made us feel mean to see how good Pop Miller was to him.” Harper’s Young People

June 16, 1885 Hassam “The balloon was sailing over majestically” Harper’s Young People

May 1892 Hassam “The Jam of Street Cars at the corner of Madison and State Streets, Chicago” Scribner’s

May, 1892 Hassam “The Crowd at Park Street Church, Boston” Scribner’s

April 1893 Hassam “The Brooklyn Bridge on a Wintery Day” Harper’s Monthly

November 1893 Hassam “The Manhattan Club-House” Century Magazine

November 1893 Hassam “Sunday on Fifth Avenue” Century Magazine

November 1893 Hassam “Delmonico’s” Century Magazine

John Henry Twachtman

John Henry Twachtman, one of America’s leading impressionist painters, was born on August 4, 1853 in Cincinnati. Ohio. He studied art under Frank Duveneck, a German- American from across the river in Kentucky. It was probably his German influence that led Twachtman to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany from 1875 to 1877. Later (1883-85) he was to study in Paris where he developed a lighter, more Tonalistic style.

Eventually, he settled in Greenwich, Connecticut where he became well-known as an impressionist painter. From 1889 until 1902 he taught at the Art Student’s League in New York. It was during this time that he provided illustrations for, in particular, Scribner’s Magazine. Many of those pictures were copies of his paintings. It is too bad that when he began contributing, pictures could not be printed in color in magazines. Thus many of his illustrations (such as “The Season’s Boon” p. 38) lose much of their beauty when reproduced in black and white.

Unfortunately the artist died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1902 at the age of 49. Today many of his works are part of the collections of some of America’s most prestigious museums.

July 1888 Twachtman “Below the Brooklyn Bridge” Scribner’s

December 1888 Twachtman Scribner’s

Dec. 1889 Twachtman “Montauk Point.” Scribner’s

December 1889 Twachtman from “Montauk Point” Scribner’s

July, 1890 Twachtman “The Season’s Boon.” Scribner’s

August, 1890 Twachtman “Winter Evening “ Scribner’s

June 1892 Twachtman “Sea Carmel Beach, Cal.” Scribner’s

June 1892 Twachtman “The Isles of the Cyclops, near Catania, Sicily” Scribner’s

Frederic Sackrider Remington

Frederic Remington was born on October 4, 1861 in Canton, New York. For the first four years of his life, his father was away, serving as a colonel in the northern army. He returned home in 1865 to become a newspaper editor and postmaster in Canton, but his enthusiasm for military service did not end; he wanted his son Frederic to follow in his footsteps and, in due time, enter the army as an officer.

Frederic, however, hardly seemed the military type. He was a mediocre student, especially in math, and seemed to be lacking in ambition. He did like to sketch pictures, but that hardly seemed to his father to lead anywhere. Frederic himself said that he was not overly ambitious.

The family moved several times. They went to Bloomington, Indiana, but that didn’t work out so they returned to Canton and then moved up river to Ogdensburg. Frederic attended private schools and must have done well enough to be accepted by the art school at Yale. While there, Remington found football far more interesting than the art program. Then suddenly his father died and he left college permanently.

He was given a modest inheritance and with that he travelled west, to Montana. Later, he moved to Kansas and tried raising sheep. None of his business opportunities proved successful and while his wife, who hated Kansas, headed back east, he travelled west, sketching scenes and people and painting as he went. He was able to get by selling his

43 paintings. In 1882 (he was now 21) he sold one picture to Harper’s Weekly. More did not immediately follow, but he moved back east, to Brooklyn, and began studying at the Art Student’s League.

Then in 1886 the great flow of illustrations began in earnest. Many were of the old West, to which he returned quite regularly, but he also published pictures of eastern horsemen and women, soldiers on the march, and many other subjects. Eventually he would travel to Russia and Africa and provide sketches from each. He wrote novels and many illustrated articles. He was seen most often in Harper’s Weekly, but articles and illustrations by him are also to be found in Century Magazine, Harper’s Monthly, Scribner’s, Collier’s, etc. This is all from a supposedly mediocre student who had little ambition.

In the late 1890s he began experimenting with sculpture and soon became known for his statues of cowboys of the old West. In the early 1900s he began publishing color prints, derived from his many paintings. Many of these were large centerfold works that were then also sold as prints. In other words he was a colossal success. On Dec. 26, 1909 the unexpected occurred. His appendix ruptured and within a few hours he was dead. Still, for several years, Collier’s continued to print his pictures (see the last one in this set) so that many readers did not even know about his death.

Jan. 15, 1887 Remington Harper’s Weekly

May 5, 1888 Remington Harper’s Weekly

Sept. 13, 1890 Remington Harper’s Weekly

Dec. 6, 1891 Remington Harper’s Weekly

Dec. 6, 1890 Remington “ Ghost Dance” Harper’s Weekly

March 1894 Remington “Russian Jew” Harper’s Monthly

March 1893 Remington “Turcos, Algeria” Harper’s Monthly

October 1902 Remington “The Half-Breed” Scribner’s

October 20, 1906 Remington “The Parley” Collier’s

January 21, 1911 Remington “The Snow Trail” Collier’s

Arthur B. Davies, The Dawning, 1915

Arthur Bowen Davies

Arthur Bowen Davies was born in Utica, New York on September 26, 1863. His father both ran a clothing store and was the minister of a Welsh church. Arthur, at a fairly early age, became interested in art, studied with a man named Dwight Williams from Cazenovia and was much moved by an exhibition in Utica of American, especially Hudson River school, art. He was particularly fascinated by the work of George Innis whose paintings reflected the mystical attitude of Emmanuel Swedenborg.

When Arthur was 15, his father’s business failed and the family decided to start over in Chicago. Because finances were bad, college was out of the question. Eventually Arthur got a job with an engineering firm and travelled to Colorado. From there he traveled to Mexico. He sketched western scenes, but somehow never became as fascinated by the West as much as his contemporary, Frederic Remington. Finally, he returned to Chicago and studied art at the Chicago Academy of Art.

Then, in 1885, he moved to New York City where he studied at the Art Students League, supporting himself by painting billboards and creating illustrations. Unlike Remington, who really became a professional illustrator, Davies illustrated to pay the bills and stopped doing so as soon as he could. Therefore, his illustrations give little clue as to where his artistic life was headed. Neither his children’s pictures nor his adult pictures express the symbolic mysteries to be discovered in his mature work. One would never guess that he would be the one to introduce to America through the Armory Show of 1913 the radically new approach of such people as Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp.

Davies exhibited many of his own works with a group, often as one of the “Eight,” that included people like John Sloan and Everett Shinn. But he was never part of the Ash Can school that tended to depict life with all its raggedness and roughness. In his paintings, one frequently enters a dream-like stage where nothing seems quite “real” or rather that reality transcends the ordinary world of the senses. To the end, he created art that was unique, mysterious, and without equal.

The artist died in 1929 in Florence, Italy. It was only then that his wife and children, who lived in Congers. N.Y., learned that he had another wife (common-law) and daughter in New York City. The two wives traveled together to Italy to collect his remains.

Nov. 1888 Davies Century Magazine

Some of his work was simply to turn a photograph (which in 1888 still could not be reproduced in a magazine) into an illustration.

Mar., 1888 Davies Portrait of Franz Liszt Century

May 1888 Davies “Madam Arachne” St. Nicholas Magazine

May 1888 Davies from “A Moving Story” St. Nicholas Magazine

Aug. 1888 from “The Bellboy’s Story” St. Nicholas Magazine,

Aug. 1888 Davies from “The Bellboy’s Story” St. Nicholas Magazine

Oct. 1888 Davies from “From House to House” St. Nicholas Magazine

Oct. 1888 Davies from “Watseka” St. Nicholas Magazine

At Mouquin's (1905), the Art Institute of Chicago

William James Glackens

William Glackens was born on March 13, 1870 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is interesting that his older brother, Louis, also became an illustrator and cartoonist. After high school, William got a job with the Philadelphia Record as an artist reporter. No one had yet figured out how to put photographs in newspapers, so some reporters were still employed to draw pictures of events. In 1892, he left the Record and moved to the Philadelphia Press. So, from the very beginning, he was involved with illustrations for printed news copy.

Glackens also began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, particularly with Thomas Anshutz. It was there that he met a fellow student, John Sloan, and through him met Robert Henri. Their influence led him to become interested in American realism. He was, as a result, one of the so-called founders of the Ash Can school. He began exhibiting as one of “The Eight,” a group that also included Arthur Bowen Davies, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, George Luks, Ernest Lawson, Maurice Prendergast, and Robert Henri. Some were Ash Can realists; some were not.

In 1895 he went to Europe where he came under the strong influence of Renoir; in 1896 he moved to New York City. Unlike some of the other artists, he did not give up illustration easily. His painting, however, changed as he grew older with more landscapes and portraits and fewer urban scenes. His pictures exude a pleasantness sometimes missing from the work of other members of the Ash Can School.

65 He died rather suddenly on May 22, 1938 a very well respected artist.

July 21, 1900 Glackens Harper’s Weekly

Dec. 1910 Glackens Collier’s

July 8, 1911 Glackens Collier’s

Nov. 11, 1911 Glackens Collier’s

Aug. 31, 1912 Glackens from “A Broad Prairie Meeting” Collier’s

August 31, 1912 Glackens from “A Broad Prairie Meeting” Collier’s

Dec. 13, 1913 Glackens Collier’s

The Lantern Bearers, 1908, oil on canvas on board

Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield (named originally Frederick) Parrish was born on July 25, 1870, the son of an engraver and painter. He studied at Haverford College, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Drexel Institute. He began his work of illustration quite early so that by 1898 he was well enough off to buy land for a house. Unlike so many other artists, he chose not to live near New York or some other large city but preferred to separate himself from the commercial world by living in New Hampshire. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why his style is invariably unusual and unique.

He became known as a book illustrator (L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose, 1897; Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age, 1899; Eugene Fields, Poems of Childhood, 1904; Arabian Knights, 1909; A Wonder Book of Tanglewood Tales, 1910; The Knave of Hearts, 1925) He also did much work for Collier’s, Scribner’s. and several other periodicals. His first pictures were, of course, in black and white but when color illustration became possible he became known for his vivid blues and unusual color combinations. In the 1920s he also became known for his many advertisement pictures for companies such as Edison Mazda lamps.

In the late 1920’s he turned from illustration almost entirely and spent the rest of his life painting landscapes. He died in 1966

One of the eighteen pictures in Kenneth Grahame, The Golden Age 1899. From the beginning, Parrish’s work involved highly imaginative subjects

Parrish “Dinkey Bird” From Eugene Fields, Poems of Childhood, 1904

Aug. 1901 Parrish “Through the Night she calls to men…” Scribner’s

July, 1905 Parrish Cover Collier’s

1905 Parrish from Arabian Nights

Parrish Illustration for Edison-Mazda, 1920

Parrish Illustration for Louise Saunders, The Knave of Hearts , 1925

John French Sloan, McSorley's Bar, 1912

John French Sloan

John Sloan was born on August 2, 1871 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania but grew up in Philadelphia. In 1888, when he was still only 16 years old, his father became disabled mentally. Therefore John dropped out of school and began work in a book and print store in order to support his family. In 1890 he moved to another store where he designed Christmas cards. Two years later, in 1892, he became an illustrator for the Philadelphia Inquirer. As already mentioned, printing photographs in newspapers was not yet possible so newspapers hired artists to provide the pictures for many events. He now began taking classes in art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under Thomas Anshutz. It was here that he re-met an old acquaintance, William Glackens, and came under the influence of realist painter, Robert Henri. In the meantime, he began working for the Philadelphia Press, doing much the same sort of work.

By 1904 he had married and moved to New York City. His marriage was a difficult one, for his wife, whom he had met in a brothel, was an alcoholic and quite unstable. Nevertheless, he loved her very much and the relationship lasted until 1943 when she died of coronary heart disease. He then took a second wife, a former student who was some 40 years younger than he.

In the meantime, he began producing a great number of realistic pictures, usually about New York City. Before long, he became a member of the Eight, a group of artists that exhibited together at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. They were not, however, all “realists.” Davies, Prendergast, and Luks developed a very different style and would not have been included until the title “Ash Can.” Sloan did not accept the term either, but exhibited the sort of realism that qualified him for membership in the Ash Can School.

81 Not only was he a realist; Sloan also held very strong political views. He was a socialist (though never a communist) who was disgusted by the terrible inequities that capitalism had produced in America. He was also a pacifist who was much opposed to the United States entering World War I.. Although few of his paintings and etchings communicate these political ideas directly, they are always about how life really is.

In the meantime, while he continued produce great paintings that did not sell, he also worked as an illustrator for several magazines including particularly Collier’s. Here are a few examples of illustrative art that is often funny and imaginative rather than somberly realistic. It was his illustrative work that provided the money for survival until his paintings became recognized as valuable and began to sell.

John Sloan died on September 7, 1951 while on a trip in Hanover, New Hampshire.

June 6, 1908 Sloan Collier’s

June 6, 1908 Sloan “Waiting to See the New Manager” Collier’s

November 1908 Sloan Collier’s

Nov. 14, 1908 Sloan Collier’s

Aug. 9, 1913 Sloan from “The Noiseless Suffragette” Collier’s

Sept. 6, 1913 Sloan Collier’s

Sept. 6, 1913 Sloan from “A Job of Work” Collier’s

Dec. 1914 Sloan “Ballad of the Monsters” Century Magazine

Girl in a Bathtub, 1903

Everett Shinn

Everett Shinn was born on Nov. 6, 1876 in Woodstown, New Jersey, a Quaker community where his parents were farmers. At an early age he showed considerable interest in drawing, so at age 15 he was enrolled in the Spring Garden Institute to study mechanical drawing. The next year he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. By age 17 he was already serving as a staff artist for the Philadelphia Press.

In 1897 he moved to New York City to become an urban realist like John Sloan. A year later he married Florence Scovel who was already a successful illustrator, doing a variety of small, but often funny, pictures for a variety of magazines. Unfortunately, the marriage was terminated in 1912 and Everett Shinn went his own way, marrying and then divorcing three other women.

His best years were full of success. He had several well-received exhibitions, and did both murals and stage sets. He also became a very successful illustrator. The Depression years, however, were not so happy. He spent a great deal of time and money in divorce proceedings and in his later years was often on the verge of economic collapse. He was much opposed to modernist art and, eventually, his style of painting went out of vogue. He died on May 1, 1953 of lung cancer.

Feb. 1901 Shinn “Cabs of the Fifth Avenue side of Madison Square” Century

It is very interesting that Shinn, far more than Sloan, uses his realist style in his illustrations.

Feb. 1901 Shinn “Broadway, Late in the Afternoon” Century

Undated Shinn “How Easter Comes to the City” Scribner’s

This illustration certainly shows the effect of impressionism upon him.

Jan. 1915 Shinn “Making over Mary” Century

Jan. 1915 Shinn from “ Making over Mary” Century

Jan. 1915 Shinn from “Making over Mary” Century

Oct. 1915 Shinn “And he stood calmly amidst the wreckage” Century Magazine

May 1925 Shinn Scribner’s

May, 1925 Shinn Scribner’s

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Arthur Dove, Nature Symbolized No. 2, c.1911,pastel on paper,

Arthur Garfield Dove

Arthur Dove was born on August 2, 1880 in Canandaigua, New York. His father was a wealthy businessman who named his son for the 1880 Republican candidates for President (James Garfield) and Vice President (Chester A. Arthur). He attended Hobart College and then Cornell University where he became illustrator for the annual yearbook. After graduation, his parents wanted him to go into business, rather than art, but his interest in art persisted. He became a commercial artist contributing to Harper’s Monthly and several other magazines.

He married and together he and his wife, Florence, travelled to Europe where he became acquainted with the new forms of art that were developing at the turn of the century. He returned to take work again as an illustrator, but his deep interest in “serious art” led him to become America’s first abstract painter. He became a friend of Stieglitz, the photographer and gallery operator, and soon was exhibiting regularly in the Stieglitz gallery.

Eventually he left his first wife and took up with another woman, Helen Torr (called “Red”) who also was an artist. For sometime they lived on a houseboat and painted around Long Island. Although his paintings did not sell extremely well, he did find a supporter in Duncan Phillips who bought some of his paintings and underwrote some of his expenses. The couple lived in Geneva, New York for a time, but eventually moved down state. The couple survived for several years in a one-room house. In later life, Dove experienced several serious physical problems. He died on November 23, 1946.

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Dec. 14, 1907 Dove Harper’s Weekly

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December 15, 1907 Dove Collier’s

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Mar. 15, 1919 Dove Collier’s

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May 3, 1919 Dove Collier’s

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December 1926 Dove Scribner’s

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Dec. 1926 Dove Scribner’s

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Dec, 1926 Dove Scribner’s

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Dempsey and Firpo (1924),

George Bellows

George Bellows as born in August, 1882 in Columbus, Ohio. In 1901 he matriculated at Ohio State University where he played both baseball and basketball. He also worked as an illustrator for periodicals while in college. He stayed at Ohio State until 1904, but did not graduate. Instead he moved to New York City to study art. In particular, he studied with Robert Henri and through him became associated with the Eight and the Ash Can School.

Although he spent much of his time painting and is known for his pictures of prizefights and other forms of realism, he also did some illustrating. In particular he became very interested in lithography, had a lithographic press installed in his studio, and, when mature, illustrated a number of books, including some by H.G. Wells, with lithographs.

Like Remington, Bellows was suddenly stricken with appendicitis. He died on January 8, 1925 at the age of 43.

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1910 Bellows from “The Roar of the Room” Collier’s

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1910 Bellows from “The Roar of the Room” Collier’s

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1910 Bellows from “The Roar of the Room” Collier’s

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1910 Bellows from “The Roar of the Room” Collier’s

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January 1922 Bellows “He. . .silently went out” Century

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April, 1922 Bellows Untitled Frontispiece Century

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Conclusions

The conclusion of all this seems to be that the relation between fine art and illustration is many-fold. Many artists have never indulged in illustrating and many illustrators have not engaged very seriously in painting. Some artists, like Arthur Bowen Davies, took up illustration, it would appear, just to make some money. His style of illustration has little to do with the style of his painting. Several others stopped illustrating to devote full- time to painting. On the other hand, people like Frederic Remington and Maxfield Parrish seem to have been primarily illustrators who then used their illustrative skill to produce fine art. Some enjoyed their work as illustrators; some hated it. Some, like Arthur Dove, had one style for illustration and an entirely different style for fine art. Many of Everett Shinn’s illustrations, on the other hand, directly express his realist style of painting.

All of this makes any firm conclusions difficult to achieve. Perhaps generalizations are impossible. Nevertheless, it does seem worthwhile, when studying an artist, to look at both sides of the coin. Illustrations by Winslow Homer tell us a great deal about the man. Some of them, in fact, were turned into paintings so that the two sides of his art are clearly interconnected. Arthur Dove’s rather comic illustrations also may tell us much about the man and what, perhaps, lay behind his abstract paintings. Certainly all of the illustrations tell us a great deal about America, its culture, and its traditions.

In a word, the study of illustrative art may provide important clues about both the artist and the world in which he or she lived. I would argue that one cannot understand either the history of fine art or the general history of civilization without examining the visual culture that surrounds fine art. And that culture certainly includes the world of illustration.

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Jay G. Williams

Dr. Jay G. Williams, Walcott-Bartlett Professor of Religious Studies (retired) at Hamilton College, holds degrees from Hamilton (A.B.), Union Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Columbia University (Ph.D.). He is the author of several books including: Ten Words of Freedom (1970), Understanding the Old Testament (1972), Yeshua Buddha (1978), Judaism (1980), The Riddle of the Sphinx (1990), A Reassessment of Absolute Skepticism and Religious Faith (1996), The Times and Life of Edward Robinson (1999), The Way of Adam (2002) , The Secret Sayings of Ye Su (2004), The Voyage of Life (2007), The Way and Its Power (2008), Religion: What it has been and what it is (2008), The Stupa, Buddhism in Symbolic Form (2010), How to Determine the Meaning of a Sacred Text (2011) and Thomas Nast, America’s Greatest Political Cartoonist (2014).He has also published three chapbooks of poetry as well as a significant number of scholarly articles, book reviews, and monographs. From his collection of 19th and early 20th Century illustrations he has mounted several exhibitions featuring works by Thomas Nast, Winslow Homer, Frederick Remington, and several others.