Exploring Illustration: Essays in Visual Studies
Reveling in Color
UnsignedAult & Wiborg Printing Inks, c. 1900 Advertising illustration for The Ault & Wiborg Co.
In 1878 the Ault & Wiborg Company was established in Cincinnati, Ohio specializing in manufacturing printing inks, dry color dyes, and pigments. In the mid-19th century English and German chemists began experimenting with creating colorants derived from coal-tar chemicals. So successful was this company in the use of coal-tar dyes to produce bright colored inks that [...]
“The Street That Knows No Night”
Louis Biedermann (1874-1957)
The New Broadway—The Street That Knows No Night
[Looking Down Broadway and Seventh Avenue from Long Acre Square—Forty-fourth Street]
Cover illustration for The World Sunday Magazine (November 5, 1899)
In the 19th century, Longacre Square (aka, Long Acre) in New York City was the center of the community’s carriage-making trade and was named for a similar district in London.[i] Located at the intersection of 42nd Street, Seventh Avenue, [...]
Illuminating Darkness
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) And the Symbol of Welcome is Light, 1920 Advertising illustration for Mazda Edison Company* Oil on canvas Collection of General Electric Lighting Company,Cleveland,Ohio
Recently in the New York Times (Sunday, January 8, 2012) there was an article about how a variety of American cities are ripping out or turning off some of their street lights, primarily in an attempt to save money. The author of this article, A. Roger Ekirch, is a professor [...]
The Days of Future Past
“One Hundred Years Hence” | No more Droughts. Rainmaking machines at work | Trading Cards “Compliments of Maher & Grosh Cutlery Co.” Toledo, Ohio
“One Hundred Years Hence” | Roofed cities fine weather insured. | Trading Cards “Compliments of Maher & Grosh Cutlery Co.” Toledo, Ohio
The endings of things also cause us to anticipate subsequent beginnings. As the country anticipated the dawning of the 20th century, people began to speculate what [...]
Stockings Hung on the Bedpost
It’s Christmas morning, the family’s youngest child has opened her presents and discovered the wonderful things tucked into the stocking carefully hung from the bedpost at the foot of her bed. While we can see in this Kodak advertisement that she has a new doll, a book, and a shinny brass trumpet, no doubt we cannot see everything that she has received. To record this precious moment, the girl’s older [...]
A New Woman*
Mills Thompson (1875-1944) | Miss Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1332 V St., Washington, D.C., makes a living of photographic illustration and the writing of descriptive articles for magazines, illustrated weeklies and newspapers, 1895 | Poster illustration advertising Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photographic business | Ink on paper | Cabinet of American Illustration in the Library of Congress
Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1962) was one of the earliest American women to be a professional [...]
Motivating Workers
“It can’t be done,” 1927| Bill Jones motivational card| The Parker-Holladay Company, Chicago.
In the 21st century there is a company that produces demotivational posters we may hang on our walls to remind us to laugh at the complexities of our world. Their mottos include, “GOALS: It’s best to avoid standing directly between a competitive jerk and his goals” or, “ACHIEVEMENT: You can do anything you set your mind to do [...]
Marching For Peace
The multi-disciplinary and talented Seymour Chwast is not only famous for his illustrations, but contributions to the graphic design and art-direction spheres of the commercial world. In 1982, Chwast completed an illustration for the Peace March Committee, specifically an announcement promoting their anti-nuke rally on June 12 in New York.[1] The illustration used in this bulletin prominently features a large, white bird that occupies nearly half the composition, monopolizing the [...]
That Liberty Shall Not Perish From the Earth
Joseph Pennell (1857-1926) | Watercolor sketch for poster, 1918 | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Div., Washington, D.C., DRWG/MA – Pennell, no. 3377 (Cabinet B)
Near the end of WWI, the U. S. government issued the Fourth Liberty Loan on September 28, 1918. The Loan was to float government bonds sold in the United States. The monies gathered were used by the U. S. Treasury to support the allied cause [...]
Those were the good times . . .
Edward Arthur Wilson (1886-1970)| Mont Saint-Michel, 1929| Advertising illustration for Cadillac-LaSalle, 1929
One of the advantages of age (if there are any) is the long memory to draw from and to relate to new images and things. Many years ago, when television was still new, I remember the mellifluous voice of the invisible announcer flowing over images of chic people in tony places. A parody of this is the pseudo ketchup [...]
Artist Studio
It’s the stereotypical art class in a studio that we all know. The students hold their paintbrushes and are dressed in their artist wear—similar jackets or smocks and loose, black ties. The female nude, with her back to the viewer, is elevated on a stand. Examples of artwork hang from the walls—from paintings to a nude statue. Peeking from the bottom is the top portion of an artist’s canvas—a frontal [...]
School Days
Even though this Stevan Dohanos’ Saturday Evening Post cover illustration was meant to mark the end of the college school year, by simply mentally reversing the direction of the action we can contemplate the car full of stuff being delivered to college dorm rooms and apartments all over this country in the early fall.
Camaraderie and Farm Fresh Food
The Harvest Dinner, 1941| Advertising illustration for the H. J. Heinz Company
The Heinz ketchup advertisement this illustration by Saul Tepper was created to accompany is titled, The Harvest Dinner: An Old American Institution. Tepper’s original painting shows a group of more than thirteen sun-tanned farmers seated at a large table talking, flirting, and most importantly eating, or getting ready to eat their evening meal after a long day of harvesting. [...]
From the Dark to the Light
In his blog Today’s Inspiration, illustrator and teacher Leif Peng shared some wonderful illustrations by James R. Bingham this past spring.* Of all the work there was one illustration for a Perry Mason story that stuck with me. For The man twisted . . . Bingham marvelously relayed a visual experience I remember from my youth—being in a low-ceilinged dark interior and seeing at the far edge of that space [...]
It’s Cool!
Frederick G. Cooper was a writer, cartoonist, designer, and illustrator whose penchant for using lower case letters made him known as “F. G. Cooper, the lower case artist.”* An early 20th-century book on posters describes Cooper’s importance thus, “F. G. Cooper had contributed consistently to the development of the poster in this country and has always been conspicuous for excellent poster lettering, vigorous and legible. He is responsible for the present [...]
Smash the Hun!
Edward Hopper (1882-1967)| Study for Smash the Hun, 1918| For poster illustration
Early in painter Edward Hopper’s career he earned his living making illustrations. As a young man his parents insisted that Hopper study commercial art in order to ensure the means for earning a living. While Hopper did not love seeking or doing illustration commissions, his work, such as those shown here, is compelling with an immediacy at odds with [...]
“She’s a WOW”
Adolph Treidler (1886-1991)|She’s a WOW, 1942
J. Howard Miller (1918-2004)|We Can Do It!, 1942
Since the Smithsonian Museum promoted J. Howard Miller’s 1942 We Can Do It, a poster of the woman worker with her arm raised and fist clenched, produced by Westinghouse to encourage war production, there have been a variety of interpretations regarding the illustration images of women in the labor force during World War II. These discussion have included [...]
Summer Nights Under the Stars
George Watson Barratt (1884-1962)|The Serenade, 1911|Illustration for Harper’s Weekly (June 3, 1911)|Collection of the Delaware Art Museum, 1986-53
Summer is here. The insert ads in our local newspapers include a variety of equipment used to enhance our seasonal out-door activities like sports, picnics, and camping out. While recreational camping may feel as though it’s been around forever, in fact it is a phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [...]
The Dazzling Ideas of Science
Founded in 1872, Popular Science magazine’s focus was to bring science to the “educated layman.” The journal featured articles by such famous scientists and inventors as Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur. In the midst of World War I, it is not surprising that the magazine’s cover image and related article focus on how to get better use of our shipping fleets and to be able to reuse the [...]
She Flies Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease
This surprising poster by Robert Wildhack incorporates the image of an avant-garde flying machine at the moment those machines are transforming from experimental vehicles into a twentieth-century reality. The struts and wings of the biplane glider provide the support for an adventurous young woman laying crosswise on the glider’s lower wings. A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings, one placed above the other. In the lower back ground [...]
The Ties that Bind and Separate
Alfred Charles Parker (1906-1985)|Mother and Daughter Skating, 1939|Cover tear sheet for Ladies’ Home Journal (February 1939)|Al Parker Collection, Dept. of Special Col., Washington University Libraries © by the Meredith Corporation
Certain topics transcend generations in their ability to spark interest and debate. The dynamic of the mother-daughter relationship is one such subject. Currently, the cable giant HBO is premiering its newest miniseries, Mildred Pierce. Adapted from the 1941 novel by James [...]
Machines of the Future–Astounding Possibilities!
Howard V. Brown (1878-1945|Cover of Astounding Stories v. 14, # 2 (October 1934)
Imagine if you will, that it is 1938 and you are a movie set designer looking for visual inspirations for a film about to be shot at MGM studios. A portion of the story being made into the movie is set in a fictional land where there is a city of small people and another capitol [...]
Libraries are built book upon book
When seeking an inspiration for a new illustration, artists may sometimes re-address a successful image of their own or they may borrow a concept from other work that they admire. In 1962 Norman Rockwell created a poster design for the Stockbridge Massachusetts Library in honor of its Centennial Celebration. His inspiration appears to have been a poster created during World War I by the illustrator Charles Buckles Falls.
The Triangle Factory Fire, March 25, 1911
March 25, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of the fire that killed 146 workers of the Triangle Waist Company located at 23-29 Washington Place and Greene Street (at the northern corner of Washington Square East) in New York City. Triangle occupied the top three floors of the ten-story building. The Triangle Waist Company was a garment factory that made women’s shirtwaist blouses—the style combined tight waists, some button placket and [...]