Filboid Studge

Life Drawing Sunday 37: Michael Angelo Woolf

2009-04-19T16:57:00.000-07:00

1. Riis' Pieces

July 18, 1895

On March 5, 1899, the day after Michael Angelo Woolf died from heart failure at his sister's house in Brooklyn, his obituary in the New York Times claimed, "Until his advent in newspaper work the comic picture was a mere vehicle for the presentation of a joke, as far as the American weekly was concerned. Mr. Woolf began the presentation of types. His characters were human beings. His favorite type was the waif, and he was known as the artist of waifs."

The waifs and other types that Woolf drew were most often from Five Points, and Mulberry Bend and other immigrant neighborhoods in New York's Lower East Side. These were the residents of the same tenements and alleys that Jacob Riis was photographing at the same time, although with different intentions.

Jacob Riis, "The Bend"

February 22, 1894

Riis chronicled the horrific living conditions and despair he found among "the other half" . Some of his pictures are blatantly staged, but their lack of candidness isn't unusual for the time and is beside the point anyway. Riis was not interested in making art, although he arguably did. His photographs were meant to serve an agenda (which has been the subject of some recent scrutiny) and to shock society into taking reformative action, which it definitely did. (The Five Points neighborhood was knocked down and paved over, essentially wiped off the map.) To this end, the chapters in his books that dealt with the lives of the children born into these slums were probably the most effective. They were the innocent victims of poverty.

The "artist of waifs" devoted a lot his attention to these children, too. Woolf's drawings, without the stylistic bombast of a Gibson or a Sullivant and rarely printed larger than a quarter of a page, had a quirky charm and a sketched on-the-spot, reportorial honesty to them. The Times said, "To those who remember and who reveled in the old, rude, forceful school of newspaper portraiture which preceded the present more artistic but not more original school the death of Michael Angelo Woolf comes as news of the loss of a personal friend."

There's no evidence that Woolf knew Jacob Riis personally or shared his interest in reform. Woolf did on occasion do a drawing that could be considered social commentary, especially if the occasion was Christmas or Thanksgiving, but he rarely editorialized, at least not within the pages of Life. Still, the chance that the two newspapermen never crossed paths seems awfully slim.

April 28, 1887

Jacob Riis, "Hell's Kitchen and Sebastopol"

Jacob Riis, "The Street Their Playground"

January 16, 1896

July 21, 1887

Jacob Riis,"A growler gang in session [the "Montgomery Guards'at the West 37 Street dock]"

Jacob Riis, "Rushing the growler [beer-can]"

April 16, 1896

August 25, 1887

Jacob Riis, Old house on a Bleecker Street back lot, between Mercer and Greene Streets

Jacob Riis, Members of the gang showing how they "did the trick"

July 21, 1892

July 28, 1892

Woolf's eye was every bit as unflinching as Riis' camera was. That he found humor in the lives of the tenement dwellers, both children and adults, shouldn't suggest any lack of sympathy for their plight. The humor brings these characters to life, includes them in the human race. This is something that Riis' photographs, in spite of their depicting actual, living human beings, struggle to convey. Whether it comes from the harsh light of the magnesium flash or the shadowy suspicions Riis had about the moral rectitude of his voiceless subjects, there is a subtle emphasis placed on the otherness of the other half. To understand what the living conditions of the tenements were, Jacob Riis' work is essential but the picture of what life was like in these neighborhoods is incomplete without Michael Angelo Woolf's drawings.

February 3, 1887

September 9, 1897

February 8, 1894

March 22, 1894

July 29, 1897

2. Romance and Melodrama

Michael Angelo Woolf was born in London in 1837, and moved to America with his family at the age of twelve. About the time of the Civil War, he dedicated himself fully to a drawing career, gaining a position on the Daily Graphic, the first American illustrated newspaper. He went to Paris to study under Pierre Edouard Frère, and returned to New York to become a mainstay at Harper's magazines. Woolf became a regular contributor to Life soon after the magazine was launched in 1883.

Although he'd shown an interest in drawing from childhood and had even made a few sales at an early age Woolf's youth was spent in pursuit of a career on the stage. According to the New York Times, he was managed by Col. William E. Sinn "at the Chestnut St. Theater

March 1, 1894.

in Philadelphia. He and Col. Sinn remained warm friends throughout the rest of his life, and Mr. Woolf always liked to tell stories of his early barnstorming days."

Woolf's theatrical background may have showed itself in the attention he paid to capturing the various dialects of the Lower East Side residents and in the lampooning of melodramatic stage and dime-novel speech the children in his drawings often displayed. Whatever the inspiration for it may have been, Woolf certainly wrote some of the wordiest captions ever, no small achievement for a 19th Century cartoonist.

November 24, 1887

September 15, 1887

March 19, 1896

July 28, 1887

February 22, 1894

October 14, 1897

October 20, 1887

October 21, 1897

Next: The Gangs of New York

Life Drawing Sunday 36: More Rea Irvin

2009-02-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

Part Two: 1915-1916

January 14, 1915

January 14, 1915

January 21, 1915

February 11, 1915

February 11, 1915

February 18, 1915

March 4, 1915

March 18, 1915

April 8, 1915

May 20, 1915

June 10, 1915

June 10, 1915

June 10, 1915

September 16, 1915

September 24, 1915

October 21, 1915

October 28, 1915

October 28, 1915

January 13, 1916

January 27, 1916

March 16, 1916

June 6, 1916

June 22, 1916

July 20, 1916

August 24, 1916

September 7, 1916

October 12, 1916

November 30, 1916

December 14, 1916

Life Drawing Sunday 35: Rea Irvin

2009-02-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

Part One: 1908-1914

The obituaries published in both the New York and Los Angeles Times upon Rea Irvin's death in 1972, at the age of 90, give the impression that he did little else but create this doofus for the cover of the first issue of the New Yorker and hang out at the Players and the Dutch Treat Club. Irvin's place in literary history as the first art director— the first employee, in fact— of The New Yorker is appropriately noted but there's no mention made of the typeface and the design he created for the magazine, which has remained practically unchanged for 83 years. (For that see this article from Print.) It's all about the fop, which is a nice enough drawing and, god knows, plenty iconic. It's probably the most well-known magazine cover ever. It also has the distinction of being among the rarest of illustration jobs, one that paid a lifetime annuity¹. But it is far from the only New Yorker cover he did, and there is a tremendous body of Irvin's work from nearly two decades preceding the birth of the New Yorker that also goes unremarked upon. The obituaries barely hint at what the World Encyclopedia of Cartoons described as "Irvin's enormous impact on American cartooning."

His simplified, posterlike drawings were almost revolutionary and inspired a generation of imitators. His composition was flawlessly attractive, and his figures, for all their animation and exaggeration, were anatomically sound. ...He drew many series of full-pagers for Life, illustrated many books, created the cover design for the New Yorker, and helped shape the magazine's formidable approach to cartooning, certainly one of the major forces in American graphic arts.

Rea Irvin was born in San Francisco in 1881, and studied there at what was then the Hopkins Art Institute. He worked at several newspapers in San Francisco and in Honolulu before briefly pursuing a career as an actor in 1903. Shortly thereafter he arrived in New York , an illustrator once again.

January 2, 1908.

The drawings posted here are from the beginning of Rea Irvin's association with Life, up until the arbitrarily chosen stopping point of 1914. According to a short biographical sketch published in the December 14, 1911 issue, it took Irvin five years to find his way to Life's offices. That would make the spinster cartoon at the right one of the earliest, if not the very first, drawings he did for Life.

Brendan Gill wrote in his obituary for Irvin in the New Yorker, "His style as an artist was decorative and was deliberately without depth of perspective; it had the quality of Chinese calligraphy, though with a Western boldness of color. He had the patience of a skilled craftsman and could draw in almost any mode." Ironically, for an artist who would essentially be remembered for a single drawing, no one at Life was more untethered to a single style than Irvin, including his contemporary and fellow Westerner Fred Cooper. There may be a typical Irvin drawing style from which everything else he did departs, but what is consistent throughout his work is perfect composition, amazing color sense (this will be more apparent in future posts) and wit.

December 8, 1910.

December 15, 1910.

September 7, 1911.

December 14, 1911.

September 12, 1912.

January 23, 1913.

March 27, 1913.

March 27, 1913.

April 24, 1913.

October 23, 1913.

January 29, 1914.

May 21, 1914.

May 28, 1914.

September 10, 1914

October 1, 1914.

October 8, 1914.

October 29, 1914.

Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy

In 1913 Irvin illustrated the "Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy" for Life. The feature, created by the humorist Wallace Irwin, originally ran in Colliers in 1907 and later appeared in newspapers and books. It purported to be a collection of observations on American life by a visiting Japanese "boy," the 35-year-old Hashimuro Togo and written in an unlikely pidgin dialect.

It's the illustrations that matter here, anyway. This assignment provided Irvin with opportunity to play with the style and design of Japanese prints and brushwork and to mimic in pen and ink the effects of ukiyo-e wood block printing while remaining modern and American. Irvin did two drawings for each installment; the first pair of drawings below couldn't offer a better example of his versatility.

October 23, 1913.

February 5, 1914.

April 23, 1914.

August 6, 1914.

August 13, 1914.

September 24, 1914.

October 8, 1914.

Other Rea Irvin links:
His 1930 comic strip, The Smyths.
A list of illustrated works by Ellis Parker Butler, including "The Pet" from Redbook and "Why He Married Her" from Green Book.

1. In the June 10, 1972 issue of the New Yorker, Brendan Gill recalls (confesses?) that "[a] few years ago, an editor wrote to him in St. Croix, 'Another year gone by! And soon again the anniversary cover. How are you? Don't forget to write.' With his customary playfulness, Irvin returned the note, slightly emended: 'to write' had been neatly inked out and 'the check' inserted in its place."

Adieu, yourself.

2009-01-28T02:21:00.000-08:00

Brilliant, unbelievably prolific author John Updike is dead at the age of 76. At one time it was his ambition to become a cartoonist. Who knows? He might not have been so bad at that either. A small sampling of his drawings for the Harvard Lampoon.

February 8, 1951

April, 1954

April, 1954

Life Drawing Sunday 34: Christmas

2008-12-21T19:31:00.000-08:00

Higginer, December 22, 1921.

W. B. King, December 23, 1909.

Percy Crosby, December 24, 1925.

James Montgomery Flagg, December 23, 1909.

Paul Reilly, December 24, 1925.

unknown, Christmas Number, 1902.

Percy Crosby, December 22, 1921.

William H. Walker, Christmas Number, 1902.

Chester L. Garde, December 22, 1921.

Robert John Wildhack, December 16, 1909.

Carl Anderson, December 24, 1925.

Charles Broughton, December 23, 1909.

Charles Forbell, December 22, 1921.

Albert D. Blashfield, Christmas Number, 1902.

Rodney Thompson, December 24, 1925.

C. Becker, December 22, 1921.

Albert D. Blashfield, Christmas Number, 1902.

G. B. Inwood, December 22, 1921.

unknown, December 24, 1925.

Art Young, December 24, 1925.

W. M., December 21, 1922.

F. M. Follett, Christmas Number, 1902.

John Conacher, December 22, 1921.

H. J., December 23, 1909.

Paul Reilly, December 24, 1925.

William H. Walker, December 23, 1909.

J. R. Shaver, December 22, 1921.

Anderson, December 23, 1909.

W. B. King, December 23, 1909.

G. B. Inwood, December 22, 1921.

unknown, December 24, 1925.

Art Young, Christmas Number, 1902.

F. W. Read, Christmas Number, 1902.

Herbert Paus, December 22, 1921.

Charles Sykes, December 24, 1925.

E. G. Lutz, December 23, 1909.

H. E. Dey, December 23, 1909.

E. G. Lutz, December 23, 1909.

C. Allen Gilbert, December 10, 1908.

Charles Dana Gibson, Christmas Number, 1902.

C. Allen Gilbert, Christmas Number, 1902.

Charles Dana Gibson, Christmas Number, 1902.

T. Sanford Tousey, December 23, 1920.

Mayer(?), December 22, 1921.

A.B. Walker, December 22, 1921.

William H. Walker, December 24, 1925.

Life Drawing Sunday 33: C. D. Gibson 1897

2008-08-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

Part Two: The Rest of '97

January 28, 1897.

February 4, 1897.

February 11, 1897.

March 4, 1897.

March 11, 1897.

April 1, 1897.

April 8, 1897.

April 15, 1897.

April 22, 1897.

April 22, 1897.

May 6, 1897.

May 13, 1897.

May 27, 1897.

June 3, 1897.

July 22, 1897.

August 5, 1897.

September 9, 1897.

September 9, 1897.

September 16, 1897.

October 14, 1897.

October 28, 1897.

November 4, 1897.

November 4, 1897.

November 18, 1897.

November 18, 1897.

December 2, 1897.

December 16, 1897.

Will Elder

2008-06-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

Will (Chicken Fat) Elder
1921-2008

Will Elder, the funniest comic book artist ever, passed away on May 15 at the age of 86. The Comics Reporter had a thorough look at Elder's career. (They also posted links to other online remembrances and more artwork.) The Comics Journal and Mark Evanier are worth checking out also. Both the New York and Los Angeles Times ran pretty good obituaries, the obvious error in the L.A. Times obit notwithstanding (a correction has been added). The picture gallery more than makes up for the flawed fact-checking.

Willie is an extremely funny natural born cartoonist. He contributed much to the feel of the early Mad. He did a lot to make Mad the kind of wild irreverent thing that it was, and I think Will's "chicken-fat" humor was very necessary to the feeling that Mad generated. As a matter of fact, Will did much to set the cartoon approach that was used for years in Mad — the details, the asides... —Harvey Kurtzman, interviewed by John Benson¹.

Will Elder was the definitive Mad artist. For Harvey Kurtzman's Mad, that is, the EC comic book published from 1952-1955. There was nothing like it before and, not for lack of trying, there's been nothing like it since. As some of the obituaries suggest, when Mad is evoked to describe another zany work, like a "Naked Gun" movie, it's Elder's Mad they're talking about. Mark Frauenfelder said, "Harvey Kurtzman may have invented Mad, but for 99% of Mad's readers, it's the work of Will Elder that comes to mind when they think of the magazine."

Some lucky souls — busted-down racketty old souls by now, but lucky — were around during the short time the Mad comic was coming out new every month. Some of us, almost as busted-down and racketty, discovered it when it was already ancient history —meaning 10 or 15 years old — preserved in a few hard to find paperbacks. I found a copy of one, The Mad Reader, in a pile of cartoon paperbacks in the back of Ephraim's Books in Worcester. I'm sure that by this point I'd read somewhere that Mad had started as a comic book, but this paperback was the first chance I'd had to see it. It was the best half a buck I ever spent. Much as I'd like to say that I opened the book and had some sort of a comics epiphany, the truth is I probably wasn't quick enough to immediately see the brilliance of what I had in my hands. I was probably laughing too much to notice.

The Mad Reader had two stories each drawn by Jack Davis and by Wally Wood who, along with John Severin, were the other founding Mad artists. I was already familiar with their work from the current Mad magazine or from other comics. It also had three stories drawn by Bill Elder, who I wasn't familiar with at all.

There was "Dragged Net," a spoof, obviously, of the TV show "Dragnet."
This was drawn in Elder's own style, which might seem a stupid remark were it not for the fact that the other two stories showcased another of Elder's talents, the ability to expertly mimic other cartoonist's styles.

"Starchie" set the Archie strip in an urban high school rife with "Blackboard Jungle"-like juvenile delinquency. Elder brought a lot of the riverfront to Riverdale in a spot-on, hilarious take on the Archie house style. Frank King received somewhat gentler treatment in "Gasoline Valley," where the focus of the story was on the difficulties faced by a family of cartoon characters who posess the unusual ability to grow older.

The Mad Reader was a pretty good introduction to Will Elder's work: two completely different yet equally deft parodies of other cartoonists and a blast of pure Elder. I might have made different selections for someone's first time, but anybody that doesn't get it from these three is probably going to struggle with any of them.

All of the Mad artists worked from Harvey Kurtzman's layouts (there are some examples of this method as it was used on Humbug here.) Kurtzman's genius was evident throughout The Mad Reader, in the foundation for the artwork as well as the writing, but when he teamed up with Will Elder something special happened, something extra was added... and that something was... chicken fat.

"Chicken fat" is described as the extra jokes and business added into the backgrounds, the things that made repeat readings worthwhile. Put like that it suggests an identifiable but ultimately imitable aspect of Elder's work. The real payoff to reading his stories again and again is discovering that everything that Elder drew was funny: people, pencil sharpeners, piles of garbage; it was all funny. I read and re-read The Mad Reader countless times, from Wood's brilliant "Superduperman" to Davis' "Lone Stranger" and I loved it all. But nothing smekked me around like Will Elder's comics did. He was my favorite. He was the best.

You know, very often at conventions somebody will rush up to me and say, "I read your work when I was young and I've wanted to meet you and shake your hand." After some years of being exposed to this kind of flattery I realize that when something touches you at an early age, it really leaves an indelible mark. That's the only way I can explain the enthusiasm of these fans when they meet me. I've done something to them at an early age. It's not imprtant that what I did is of little consequence, but that the stain runs deep. That's what's significant. What they think is much is not so much, but it's the way they've been touched that makes it into something important. But it's not really important. —Harvey Kurtzman, interviewed by John Benson².

Or, put another way:

One Sunday in October of 1974 I bused over to the Booklyn Museum for an exhibition called "Brooklyn's Comic Book Artists". This was, it was claimed, the first time comic book art had hung in a museum and that alone probably would have been reason enough to go look. But the list of artists included in the show, even restricted as it was to those who were Brooklyn-born or -raised, made this an absolute must-see event: there were 13 in all, among them Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, Carmine Infantino, Gray Morrow, Neal Adams, Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman.

From Playboy, June, 1973.

Kurtzman exhibited this Little Annie Fanny story. Though Elder's name was on the artwork, the label on the wall credited only Kurtzman, which I thought was odd. I remember spending a lot of time in front of these pages, absorbed in each panel, probably a lot like this guy, only not so tidy. After a while I was approached by a kid roughly my age, though probably still in high school, who very nicely asked if I wouldn't mind stepping back for just a minute. I did and then turned to see what looked like a typical suburban family on a typical Sunday outing, except the typical suburban dad was now taking snapshots of Playboy cartoons hanging on a museum wall. As I recall — or, more likely, embellish — more snaps were taken of family members posing by the pages. This, I thought, has got to be him.

"I wonder," I wondered out loud to the nice kid, "why they left the other artist's name off the wall?"

"I don't know." He turned to the man taking pictures. "Hey, Dad, he wants to know how come they left your name off?"

"I'm from the Bronx," he said.

Yep, it was him all right. Will Elder standing right over there. There must have been a million things I wanted to say and questions I wanted to ask but I couldn't think of a single one of them at the moment. Instead, I talk with the kid. I won't even pretend I can recall how that conversation went. All I remember is that he said his name was Marty and that he wanted to be a disc jockey, which made an impression because that was how my father earned his living. "Let's trade dads," I suggested.

Eventually he took me over to meet his dad. Mr. Elder was now looking at someone else's artwork. I'm standing next to an actual idol of mine. My mind has gone blank. I don't know what to say. I'm a complete moron. Luckily, Marty wasn't so overwhelmed. "Dad, this is Steve. He wants to be a cartoonist."

Will Elder gave me a quick glance and then turned back to the artwork.

"Well," he said, "If that's all you can do..."

OK, OK, I get it, already. Sheesh! This stuff isn't important. I know. I was just deeply stained at an early age, otherwise I'd know how insignificant it all is.

Bullshit. Fifty years after it first appeared this stuff is still funny. It still makes me laugh anyway.That's not important?

1, 2. The interview of Harvey Kurtzman by John Benson, September 7, 1985,was conducted especially for publication in the 4 volume set of the complete Mad, published by Russ Cochran, 1987.

Thanks to Tom for the Annie scans, and to Jim for bringing the sad news to my attention in the first place. Also, heartfelt condolences and very, very belated thanks to Martin Elder.

Life Drawing Sunday 32: Play Ball!

2008-04-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

A. X. Peña, May 26, 1927.

Sunday was officially Opening Day of the 2008 Major League Baseball season, although most of the teams opened their season on Monday and technically the season began last week in Japan when the Boston Red Sox met the Oakland Athletics at the Tokyo Dome to play two games that count. In the spirit of the occasion "Life Drawing Sunday" appears on Wednesday this week.

Putting together a post of baseball cartoons should have been a cinch, what with baseball being the National Pastime and all, and Life being dedicated to commenting on all manner of national pastimes. Also, given roughly 50 years of publication, with six months of each year in which baseball was a relevant and insanely popular topic, there should have been a huge selection to choose from, even from a very incomplete collection. There wasn't. What follows is literally everything I found that had anything remotely to do with baseball. I could fill a couple of posts with golf cartoons, probably even do one about insects golfing but, for now, this is it for baseball.

Early on there was a sports column in the back of the magazine, and by sports I mean mostly yacht racing and that rowing thing that Ivy League schools do. There was mention of baseball (or Base Ball) at times, in particular as it was played by the New York Mets (the 1883-87 version) and the New York Giants.

May 12, 1887.

May 19, 1887.

Michael Angelo Woolf, November 1, 1888.

The column didn't last very long and there was little mention of the game in the magazine's text after that. I did find an editorial that seems to be kinda advocating for free agency, or simple decency. The New York Times had a detailed account of the "arraignment".

editorial, July 28, 1887.

But the text portions of Life aren't the main interest here. The baseball cartoons and drawings that they did publish are, and these seem to be easily divided into three categories. There are those that see the game as a part of childhood, kids playing in sandlot games or in knothole gangs. There's the "kill the umpire" cartoons, which must have been a cliché even at the time Casey was written, and some of which involve children too. Finally there are the cartoons that use the game as metaphor but are really about anything other than baseball. As always, though, there are some good drawings.

Kerr Eby, August 20, 1925.

J. R. Shaver, May 8, 1919.

unsigned (probably M. Woolf), June 23, 1887.

W. O. Wilson, July 30, 1914.

J. R. Shaver, June 3,1920.

Ellison Hoover, June 10, 1915.

Percy Crosby, September 10, 1914.

J. R. Shaver, September 5, 1918.

Percy Crosby, July 8, 1920.

Harry K. Coultaus, May 15, 1909.

Farr, August 27, 1925.

Harry K. Coultaus, July 28, 1887.

Donald McKee, August 13, 1914.

Bayard Jones, August 29, 1912.

R. Culter, June 1, 1916.

C. W. Kahles, August 6, 1914.

Russ Westover, July 8, 1920.

Donald McKee, May 28, 1914.

Sidney (?) Delevante, May 20, 1920.

S.W. Van Schaick, September 22, 1887.

F. T. Richards, July 14, 1910.

Forbell, January 23, 1913.

Ellison Hoover, July 22, 1920.

Henry Grace Dart, July 14, 1910.

Ellison Hoover, July 9, 1925.

Life Drawing Sunday 31: Easter

2008-03-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Warren Davis, April 3, 1924

Rea Irvin, April 3, 1924

Alice Harvey, April 3, 1924

William Heath Robinson, April 3, 1924

Harrison Cady, April 3, 1924

Albert D. Blashfield, March 27, 1902

unknown, March 29, 1928

Charles Sykes, April 3, 1924

Will Starrett, April 3, 1924

Victor C. Anderson, April 1, 1920

Ethel Plummer, March 29, 1928

Life Drawing Sunday 30: C. D. Gibson 1897

2008-01-27T16:05:00.000-08:00

Part One: The Gibson Girls of '97

March 18, 1897

April 15, 1897

May 6, 1897

July 15, 1897

March 11, 1897

June 10, 1897

September 2, 1897

January 21, 1897

April 1, 1897

July 22, 1897

July 29, 1897

August 26, 1897

July 8, 1897

June 3, 1897

February 18, 1897

July 29, 1897

July 8, 1897

January 7, 1897

July 1, 1897

January 14, 1897

April 29, 1897

January 21, 1897

June 24, 1897

March 25, 1897

May 20, 1897

Life Drawing Sunday 29: Christmas

2007-12-23T22:59:00.000-08:00

F. G. Cooper, December 3, 1925

Charles J. Budd, December 17, 1908

Ralph Barton, December 3, 1925

Frederick Strothmann, December 3, 1925

Albert D. Blashfield, December 4, 1897

Rea Irvin, December 12, 1923

Tousey, December 14, 1922

Gluyas Williams, December 3, 1925

Art Young, December 16, 1897

Power O'Malley, December 17, 1908

Webster, December 23, 1920

Paul Goold, December 12, 1920

John Held, Jr., December 3, 1925

R. Culter, December 3, 1925

C. F. Peters, December 3, 1925

Rube Goldberg, December 3, 1925

Gardner Rea, December 23, 1920

J. R. Shaver, December 21, 1922

Edward Monks, December 14, 1922

Percy Crosby, December 02, 1926

J. M. Flagg, December 19, 1907

Charles Dana Gibson, December 23, 1897

F. G. Attwood, December 8, 1887

Life Drawing Sunday 28: Still More Sullivant

2007-12-02T16:46:00.000-08:00

Here are some more T. S. Sullivant drawings from Life. The ones from 1892 represent the earliest examples of his work I've found so far. They're more conventional, anatomically and in their reliance on cross-hatching, but still singular. The drawings from 1895 seem to be edging slightly more toward what would become his signature style, or going off in another direction entirely.

October 20, 1892

December 1, 1892

May 9, 1895

May 30, 1895

October 17, 1895

October 17, 1895

I'd hoped by this point to be able to conclude the Fables series but I haven't yet got my hands on any issues from the second half of 1896 so I don't even know if there were any more of them. Whatever Sullivant was doing in 1897 must have been done somewhere other than at Life. His work appeared there only twice during the entire year, both examples of the illustrated puns that had been a staple of the magazine since it began. Through the first 17 weeks of '98, where today's post stops, Sullivant appeared only five times, though one of these drawings is a knockout center spread. The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons says that at some point near the turn of the century Sullivant began contributing more often to Judge, which may explain his meager output for Life in '97 and early '98. No matter. There's still another 25 years of his work to go through.

April 8, 1897

April 29, 1897

January 13, 1898

January 20, 1898

March 10, 1898

April 21, 1898
Mazeppa

April 28, 1898

Life Drawing Sunday 27: Leftovers

2007-11-25T01:06:00.000-08:00

Charles Johnson, November 24, 1892

G. B. Inwood, November 24, 1921

F. T. Richards, November 29, 1900

Albert D. Blashfield, November 29, 1900

F. W. Read, November 22, 1900

L. B. Holton, November 18, 1926

F. G. Attwood, November 24, 1898

F. T. Richards, November 25, 1920

F. G. Attwood, November 25, 1897

Michael Angelo Woolf, November 24, 1892

Albert D. Blashfield, November 24, 1892

Michael Angelo Woolf, November 25, 1897

Michael Angelo Woolf, November 25, 1897

F. T. Richards, November 24, 1892

E. M. Kemble, November 29, 1900

Carl Anderson, November 18, 1926

Michael Angelo Woolf, November 24, 1892

Morrison, November 22, 1900

F. W. Read, November 29, 1900

E. M. Kemble, November 29, 1900

Charles Johnson, November 24, 1892

"Chip" Bellew, November 24, 1892

John Connacher, November 9, 1922

Gus Dirks, November 25, 1900

Last Days of Boney Island

2007-10-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

Boney Island, has been a Halloween tradition in Sherman Oaks for ten years. Apparently, neighborhood wet blankets have had it up to here with the fun and joy and happy children (and, to be fair, the heavy traffic) for two weeks of the year. After this Wednesday it all comes down for the final time, and will be auctioned off piecemeal on E-Bay.

10 Years Later...

2007-08-01T02:30:00.000-07:00

This is the front of the thank-you note sent to the guests at our wedding, which took place ten years ago today. It was originally doodled on a napkin or place mat in some barroom in Ogunquit, Maine that very night by my lovely and exceptionally talented wife, and then pretty much fucked up by me in clean-up. But at least it can now be said that as a foretelling of the future, this is way off the mark. (We no longer have the cat.)

Happy Anniversary, Sweetie!

2007-07-04T17:11:00.000-07:00

Life Drawing Sunday 26: Fred G. Cooper, Part 2

2007-05-27T02:22:00.000-07:00

Part Two: Covers, centerspreads and other stuff

June 10, 1915

August 5, 1926

November 18, 1926

March 31, 1927

May 12,1927

May 12, 1927

May 26, 1927

May 26, 1927

Illustrations for one of a series of articles by Will Rogers when Life facetiously backed him for president in 1928.
August 30, 1928

October 27, 1927

January 26, 1928

A masthead from 1929

Department heads designed by Cooper during his time as Life's art editor.

February 1, 1929

February 21, 1930

February 9, 1928

February 17, 1927

December 21, 1928

November 20, 1931

Life Drawing Sunday 25: Fred G. Cooper

2007-05-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

Part One: Cartoons, comics strips and "cartoonettes"

Drop cap from the book review column, "Life and Letters",
March 10, 1927.

he three St. Patrick's Day covers by Fred G. Cooper in the previous post, along with the two New Year covers posted in December, are a good example of what Leslie Cabarga has called Cooper's "self-consciously unself-conscious" approach to illustration. "[T]hroughout his life he did not limit himself to a solitary artistic identity," Cabarga writes in The Lettering and Design of F. G. Cooper.* "Yet no matter the style or technique employed his work was always easily identifiable."

F. G. Cooper arrived in New York City in 1904, and began a lengthy career as a freelance designer and illustrator that would include a fifty year association with New York Edison (later ConEd) , creating posters, ads, calendars -basically a visual identity - for the company. He did ads for Westinghouse, posters for the War Department, illustrated books and magazine articles and designed alphabets (though not, as is often assumed, Cooper Black.) He was a founding member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). And he contributed to Life, from 1904 on into the early 1930's, when he served briefly as the art editor during the final years of Charles Dana Gibson's ownership of the magazine.

Throughout most of the Teens Cooper's main contribution to Life consisted of spot drawings, "cartoonettes" as he called them, for the editorial page. The use of spots on this page was nothing new but none of the artists that had taken on the assignment before seemed as comfortable as Cooper working in such a small space (one 12.5 pica wide column, 5 lines deep.)

The tiny drawings were, for the most part, only tangentially related to the article they were supposed to be illustrating. They could be - and were - used over and over again well into the Twenties, for a wide range of topics, and yet they don't seem at all generic or like clip art.

October 12, 1911

May 28, 1914

August 13, 1914

July 30, 1914

Beyond the editorial page "cartoonettes", which appeared weekly, there seems to have been only an occasional panel cartoon or cover contributed by Cooper in the 1910s. There's undoubtedly more to be found, but probably not a lot more, which is too bad. The "Naughty Wag" cartoon below is a knockout on so many levels, I wish I had a dozen more like it to show.

December 8, 1910

September 30, 1915

March 16, 1916

In the 1920's Cooper's work appeared much more frequently. He created a series of comic strips that displayed not only his unique take on this form, but his skill as a writer and his sense of humor as well. He also designed a number of house ads for the magazine's subscription offer page. In 1928 Life published a Vaudeville number which was illustrated exclusively by Cooper, the only time an entire issue was turned over to one artist. (This will be the subject of a future post.) Whether he was contributing spots, panel cartoons or comics, Cooper somehow managed to make the entire page he was on look good. But it's the wide variety of covers that Cooper did that show off his skills as a graphic designer, letterer, cartoonist and illustrator best. Some of those will be posted next week.

March 18, 1920

March 13, 1924

March 13, 1924

August 21, 1924

October 2, 1924

September 23, 1926

December 2, 1926

November 18, 1926
October 14, 1926

June 3, 1926

April 7, 1927

August 25, 1927

August 25, 1927

May 26, 1927

June 2, 1927

August 25, 1927

March 31, 1927

* This book is loaded with great examples of F. G. Cooper's artwork, and is worth it alone for the section of monogram designs FGC created for, among many others, Milton Caniff, Freeman Gosden and Dwight Eisenhower.

Life Drawing Sunday 24: Top o' the Mornin' After

2007-03-18T01:43:00.000-07:00

uncertain, March 19, 1896

Fred G. Cooper, March 18, 1915

L. J. Holton, March 17, 1927

Albert Levering, March 17, 1927

F.G. Attwood, March 17, 1887

G. B. Inwood, March 17, 1927

Johnny Gruelle, March 17, 1927

Fred G. Cooper, March 13,1924

Charles Forbell, March 13, 1924

J. Norman Lynd, March 17, 1927

Paul Reilly, March 17, 1927

Robert Dickey, March 16, 1916

Fred G. Cooper, March 17,
1927

L. J. Holton, March 17, 1927

Farr, March 13, 1927

Life Drawing Sunday 23: Charles Dana Gibson

2007-03-11T17:18:00.000-07:00

Charles Dana Gibson made the first sale of his career to Life in 1886, at the age of eighteen. He was paid four dollars. He went home that night and cranked out five more drawings, thinking they would bring him a full twenty bucks. He brought them in to Life the next morning, and had them quickly handed back to him along with " a reflection upon the workmanship they displayed which

June 23, 1887.

sent Gibson's castle in the air to the ground."¹. Gibson revised his strategy a bit, figuring that producing fewer, better drawings would earn him more than a lot of lousy ones would. By the following year he was selling to Life regularly - he appears in a lot of the issues of 1887 - and to other magazines. The drawings are unimpressive, but not much worse than a lot what Life was publishing at the time and better than some others. John Ames Mitchell, Life's founder, publisher and art editor wrote later that he saw "beneath the outer badness of these drawings, peculiarities rarely discovered in the efforts of a beginner. ...His faults were good, able-bodied faults that held their heads up and looked you in the eye. No dodgings of the difficult points, no tricks, no uncertainty, no slurring of outlines. To be sure his ladies, in consequence, were often clad in boiler iron and although he and the Almighty, at that time, were holding different views as to the effects of light and shade, there was always courage and honesty in whatever he undertook."²
July 7, 1887
It was probably safe to assume that Gibson would overcome his "able-bodied faults" and become a decent artist, but it's unlikely anyone could have looked at his early efforts and foreseen the sudden explosion of talent he would display early in the next decade.
February 3, 1887

May 9, 1895

Gibson had earned enough to travel to Europe in 1889. In London he visited George DuMaurier, whose drawings for Punch had been an obvious influence and in Paris he spent a few months and the remainder of his funds studying at the Académie Julian. He returned to New York with, Susan E. Meyer wrote, "a vigorous new style, more daring and assertive, demonstrating a flair and dash that would forever be associated with his pen-and-ink drawings."³

February 13, 1890

March 10, 1892

June 22, 1893

June 22, 1893

March 15, 1894

January 24, 1895

July 18, 1895

October 17, 1895

January 9, 1896

February 6, 1896

April 16, 1896

The Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1895.

Gibson's greatly improved observational skills as both an artist and a humorist, along with a unique insider's perspective on New York society life, established him as an eminent social commentator of his time.He was a "trend-breaker and trend-setter"⁴; his pen line was being imitated everywhere, even in Life's own pages, and when "[h]is vision of the handsome male happened to be of a clean-shaven, athletic type... largely because of his imagery, Victorian chin-whiskers and sideburns disappeared."⁵ And his women, collectively touted by Life as The Gibson Girl, became a cultural ideal and a commercial sensation. The fortunes of both Gibson and the magazine greatly increased.

Whatever other post-Victorian values the Gibson Girl was supposed to embody, she remained focussed on the topic of marriage or, at least, marriage proposals. Gibson seemed to believe in an ideal romantic love, with Cupids yet, that was rarely realized in his cartoons. His Girl is frequently shown fending off, nastily at times, the attentions all sorts of pathetic schmoes who made the mistake of thinking they were worthy of her.
May 8, 1902
January 2, 1896
May 15, 1902

If she was pleased with her suitor, then there were money issues or Daddy issues. If she did marry, then love would die and Cupid would be sad.
"Love {Will?] Die
March 1, 1894⁶
"When He Once Goes Out, it is Hard to Get Him Back"
April 19, 1894⁷
March 25, 1896
Marriage generally wasn't pretty: behind meek men, like his character Mr. Pipp, there was a domineering, social climbing wife.

March 5, 1903
January 16, 1902
March 13, 1902October 5, 1899
Marriages were arranged for money or, worse, families "sacrificed" their daughters to not-necessarily-solvent European nobility so that they would have a title.
June 5, 1902

March 19, 1896

October 5, 1899

The first of fourteen "table-books" collecting Gibson's drawings was published in 1894. "All this fanfare over Gibson's work," Susan E. Meyer wrote, "represented a major turning point in publishing history. Never before had an illustrator so influenced American business; never before had so much money been earned from the creations of a single artist."⁸ The books, priced at $5.00 on the low end, and up to $25 for deluxe editions, sold as many as 20, 000 copies.

Gibson kept his attention on the upper class world he knew until the beginning of World War I, when he dedicated himself to first getting America involved in the war, and then to the war effort itself. (But that's another post.) There were few cartoons that featured working people, unless they were domestic servants, and none that I've ever seen that indulged in ethnic humor. Given the tone that these types of drawings in Life usually took, this is probably a good thing.
January 23, 1902
Gibson once said to a "newspaper woman", Nixola [!] Greely-Smith, in an interview, "But you said awhile ago that I had never drawn a business or professional woman. You accused me of preferring what you termed the aristocratic type. But what do you call an aristocrat? There are probably more aristocrats among the girls who work for a living than in any other class. People confound aristocracy with money. Families that have had money for two or three generations expect to equal those that have education and gentle training for centuries. It's impossible. A family that's had time to decay financially so that its women have to work for a living is certainly older than one in the flower of financial prosperity." ⁹ Clearly, Gibson was no hack at the art of dodging a question, either.

There's plenty here for social historians to kick around, but it's the drawings that matter. Again, Susan E. Meyer sums up his work best:

He wielded the pen with uncanny facility, accomplishing unimaginable feats in black and white. The delicacy of his penwork was never obliterated by his swift and daring strokes and he managed to convey, with great economy, even the most complex subjects with only a few parallel lines deftly placed. Over the years his work became increasingly ambitious, yet surprisingly more relaxed as he frequently indicated subtle changes in value (a difficult feat in pen and ink), created outrageous compositions that managed to succeed in spite of all the rules he had broken on the way. Effortlessly, he could suggest the transparency of water, the mellow play of candlelight, the fading contours created by a distant fog. Without question, no American artist before or since Charles Dana Gibson could wield the pen as skillfully.¹⁰`

January 2, 1902

February 13, 1902

February 20, 1902

March 20, 1902

April 24, 1902

May 29, 1902

December 15, 1904

Unlinked sources and notes
1. "Gibson's Early Work. His Extravagant Ideas Tempered by the Rejection of a Number of Drawings",Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1908.
2, 3, 8, 10. Susan E. Meyer,America's Great Illustrators, Abrams, 1978.
4, 5. "Penman of the Past. Charles Dana Gibson" by Rick Marschall, Nemo #11, Fantagraphics, May, 1985.
6,7. Sorry for the crappy scans. These are from a bound volume, so the center is lost, but they're too nutty not to include.
9. "Working Girls Aristocrats", Los Angeles Times, May 26, 1908.

Life Drawing Sunday 22: More T. S. Sullivant "Fables"

2007-02-11T00:42:00.000-08:00

April 30, 1896

May 7, 1896

May 14, 1896

May 21, 1896

May 28, 1896

June 4, 1896

June 4, 1896

June 11, 1896

June 11, 1896

June 18, 1896

Life Drawing Sunday 21: Gluyas Williams

2007-02-04T16:25:00.000-08:00

The Harvard Lampoon, May 15, 1909.

Gluyas Williams sold his first drawing to Life in 1911. He said,"They accepted the first one, and then waited about eight years before taking another." Maybe not so coincidentally, his appearances in Life increased noticibly around the time that Robert Benchley became an editor at the magazine in 1920. Benchley and Williams first met, and collaborated, at The Harvard Lampoon. It was a perfect marriage of writer and illustrator that would continue for decades. Williams illustrated all of Benchley's books and many of his stories. Benchley began to see himself in all of Williams' work. "There is only one drawback in having been Mr. Williams’s model for so many pictures. After years of capturing those particular facial characteristics of which my mother is so fond, he has quite unconsciously taken to putting me into all his drawings, commercial and otherwise, as the typical American Sap."

Life house ad, July 22, 1920

Williams attributed his early interest in becoming an artist to watching his older sister Mary at work. Using the pseudomym Kate Carew, she was "the first female caricaturist", known for her illustrated interviews with celebrities of the day such as Mark Twain and the Wright brothers. She also created the comic strip The Angel Child, which may also have given Gluyas an appreciation for sequential cartooning.

This post features Williams' earliest work for Life and are mostly representative of his take on the comic strip format. He would later create series that were primarily text pieces (such as his Senator Sounder character,) as well as pages depicting situations wordlessly and so well posed out that they practically animated. He also produced some astonishing full page single panel cartoons for Life and later for The New Yorker.

Richard Marschall wrote in The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons:

Seldom in the history of cartooning has there been an artist as much in command of his media as was Gluyas Williams. Technically his pen line was confident, attractive and reproducible, his figures comical but anatomically perfect, his use of perspective unerring. Conceptually his characters were strong, his choice of themes humorous, ironic and critically mature, his moods evocative and familiar. Williams seldom used tones but spotted blacks in seas of white and supple lines.

And he made it look so easy.

October 16, 1919

May 20, 1920

May 27, 1920

June 3, 1920

July 8, 1920

June 17, 1920

July 29, 1920

October 12, 1920

Life Drawing Sunday 20: Herbert Merill Wilder

2007-01-14T00:33:00.000-08:00

I got nothin', biographically speaking, on this guy except a birth year (1864) and a birthplace (Hinsdale, NH.) He seems to have been only an occasional contributor to Life, though even that's far from certain, as the years when his work does appear are those where my collection is most spotty. He may have appeared more frequently in other magazines and newspapers, but I've found no evidence of this. Whoever he was, whatever became of him, he had a likable style.

February 27, 1902

March 20, 1902

April 10, 1902

April 10, 1902

September 20, 1906

December 17, 1908

April 27, 1911

July 6, 1911

Puck's Monthly Magazine, April, 1913

Life Drawing Sunday 19: Happy New Year

2006-12-31T11:40:00.000-08:00

Fred G. CooperDecember 30, 1926

Frank Hanley, December 31, 1925

T.L., January 4, 1894

"Chip" Bellew, December 29, 1887

John Conacher, December 31, 1925

Charles Dana Gibson, December 29, 1887

Charles Howard Johnson, January 4, 1894

Charles Dana Gibson, January 4, 1894

Frank Hanley, December 31, 1925

Storm, December 30, 1926

E. Mc Nerney, December 31, 1925

"Chip" Bellew, December 29, 1887

R. Culter, December 31, 1925

"Chip" Bellew, January 4, 1894

Reginald Birch, December 31, 1925

Chester L. Garde, December 30, 1926

M. B. Walker, January 1, 1920

Charles Dana Gibson, January 4, 1894

Fred G. Cooper, December 31, 1925

Dan Lynch, January 1, 1920

Life Drawing Sunday 18: Christmas, Part Two

2006-12-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

Coles Phillips, December 2, 1926

Garrett Price, December 2, 1926

Milt Gross, December 2, 1926

James Montgomery Flagg, December 7, 1922

Dorothy Hope Smith Barlow, December 28, 1922

J. R. Shaver, December 7, 1922

Garrett Price, December 21, 1928

Gustaf Tenggren, December 7, 1922

Strothman, December 2, 1926

Charles Dana Gibson, December 21, 1928

Charles Sykes, December 2, 1926

Russell Patterson, December 2, 1926

Garrett Price, December 2, 1926

McNerney, December 2, 1926

Percy Crosby, December 2, 1926

Robert Dickey, December 2, 1926

A. B. Frost, December 7, 1922

P. Webb, December 21, 1928

Sisley, December 2, 1926

J. R. Shaver, December 28, 1922

John Conacher, December 17, 1925

Carl Anderson, December 2, 1926

J. R. Shaver, December 21, 1922

Charles Sykes, December 21, 1928

R. Cutler, December 2, 1926