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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...
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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...
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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...
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Eric H.W. Robertson: Both Traditional and Modernist
Scottish painter Eric Harald Macbeth Robertson (1887-1941) is essentially a cipher, so far as information about him on the Internet is concerned. In fact, most of what I could find regarding him was on...
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When Renoir Doubted Impressionism
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was, along with Claude Monte and Camille Pissarro, a major French Impressionist whose painting style is archetypically "Impressionistic" in the minds of most viewers....
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El Lissitzky: Mostly Non-Objective
Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890-1941), who styled himself El Lissitzy (the "El" might be from Eleazar, or perhaps from an aspect of the Unovis movement of 1920 when he first identified himself as...
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Molti Ritratti: Nancy Cunard
Nancy Cunard (1896-1965) was a rich heiress of the kind who led a messy, self-destructive life that ended in poverty, alcoholism and a degree of insanity. I speculate that, because she reached maturity...
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F.R. Gruger: Black & White Master
Frederic Rodrigo (F.R.) Gruger (1871-1953) was a prolific and highly respected illustrator whose career was at its zenith during the 1920s and early 1930s. In those days, most story illustrations (as...
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Wyndham Lewis' Excellent Modernist Portraits
Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957) divided his career between art and writing, winning esteem and controversy in both fields, but not a lot of money. By his late 50s he was undergoing serious bladder...
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Edward Penfield and His Poster Style
Edward Penfield (1866-1925) is considered America's first great poster artist. His Wikipedia entry is here, a chronology of his life and career is here and a Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame...
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Howard Chandler Christy Painted the Gamut
Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952) won fame illustrating scenes from the Spanish-American War, solidified his status by creating the "Christy Girl" in his illustrations, did posters to help the U.S....
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Charles Hermans: Belgian Painter
Charles Hermans (1839-1924), was born in Brussels and died in Menton, France (at the edge of the Italian border on the Riviera). As this brief biography indicates, his art training was not formally...
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Lewis Baumer: Cartoonist and All-Rounder
Lewis Baumer (1870-1963) made his career as a cartoonist and book illustrator, but like some of his English contemporaries (I'm thinking of you, Heath Robinson), he was capable of a lot more. That was...
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Lyonel Feininger's Crystalline Images
Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) got his start as a cartoonist, even though he was given formal training in art. So it can be helpful to be a well-fed young artist rather than a starving one while working...
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Mikhail Vrubel: Square-Brush Paintings
Mikhail Vrubel (1856-1910) died blind and not totally sane. Before that, he was one of the most interesting artists Russia produced as the traditionalist-academic school of painting crumbled and...
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Will Bradley: Master Poster Artist
The Art Nouveau era from roughly 1890 to near the time of the Great War was a high point for poster design, in my opinion. Laurtrec, Jules Cheret, Maxfield Parrish, Alphonse Mucha and others created...
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John Berkey Paints a Cadillac
A few years ago on this blog I wondered if John Berkey was the best illustrator of space ships. Along with science-fiction book covers, Berkey also did more conventional illustration. A skimpy...
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Molti Ritratti: Kaiserin Elisabeth von Österreich
Kaiserin Elisabeth von Österreich can be translated as Empress Elisabeth of Austria. And to be fully pedantic, in 1867 she became empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Elisabeth (1837-1898), was the...
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Ambrose McEvoy: Loosely-Painted Portraits
Ambrose McEvoy (1878-1927) was an English painter who usually painted loosely in a sort of Post-Impressionist manner. However, he could tighten things up when called to do formal portraits of military...
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In The Beginning: John Sloan
John Sloan (1871-1951), one of the so-called "Ashcan School" painters, began his artistic career as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia and continued that trade in New York City as he pursued his...
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