Woman's Home Companion, 1953
[Via ILLUSTRATEURS]
Category Archives: Art
A ROBERT MCGINNIS WESTERN PAINTING FOR TODAY
A HOWARD PYLE FOR TODAY
Nation Makers
TODAY'S INSPIRATION
Fans of illustration from the 1940s and 1950s (and of the Mad Men era) should make a beeline to Leif Peng's blog Today's Inspiration, which is a treasure trove of wonderful stuff. The ad pictured was published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1955.
It was drawn by Freeman Elliot — the detail above reveals a stylish and lively approach to selling mouthwash.
A HOWARD PYLE FOR TODAY
“The Attack On the Galleon”, frontispiece for Howard Pyle’s Book Of Pirates.
AN HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC FOR TODAY
In Bed, 1893
AN N. C. WYETH FOR TODAY
A DIMA DRJUCHIN FOR TODAY
See more of Dima Drjuchin's work here — derealization.
A HOWARD PYLE FOR TODAY
“Captain Kidd”, from Howard Pyle's Book Of Pirates.
A WILLY POGANY FOR TODAY
Figuring the angles . . .
PORTRAIT
Jae Song, a great cinematographer and director, is also a fine painter. He abandoned his painting for many years, but took it up again recently, and this portrait resulted.
Very cool.
AN N. C. WYETH BOOK COVER FOR TODAY
A HOWARD PYLE FOR TODAY
As kids, Joel and Ethan Coen were obsessed with the works of Howard Pyle and his disciple N. C. Wyeth. They were especially fond of the image above, one of those collected, after Pyle's death, in Howard Pyle's Book Of Pirates. They reconstructed a version of the scene in True Grit — in the cabin where Rooster and Mattie are holding the two captured outlaws.
Pyle was a very great artist, and once highly regarded — Vincent van Gogh told his brother that Pyle's work struck him dumb with admiration. He is not as well regarded today — there are no first-class collections of his work in print — but Victorian academic art continues to inform the great visual artists of the cinema, if only at second or third hand. John Ford would have known Pyle's work well, and if the look of True Grit reminds you of the look of a Ford film, it's in part because Ford and the Coens all learned from the dynamic and dramatic compositions of Pyle and his followers, so powerfully “cinematic” in their effects.
NATIVITY
What child is this?
A SATURDAY EVENING POST COVER FOR TODAY
John Falter again . . .