100 Years of Illustration

George Wright - 1

George Hand Wright, N.A. (member of the National Academy) was an extremely prolific illustrator, watercolor painter and printmaker with a long lifetime of work and achievement, but not much seems to have been documented about his personal life beyond the fact that he was born in Pennsylvania in 1872 or 1973 and died in Westport CT in 1951, where he had been one of the founders of that community of illustrators who worked for publications in New York City.

Walt Reed mentions him in his excellent work, "The Illustrator in America 1900-1960s." He says that Wright was the son of a blacksmith; that he worked for magazines such as Century, Scribner's, Harper's, and The Saturday Evening Post, among others. Reed tells us that Wright was famous for his detailed sketches, from which he later made his illustrations. I've included some of them here. They were done for Harper's Monthly Magazine in 1918 when the United States was training its troops to fight in France alongside its British and French allies.

I'll be posting more work by this prodigious illustrator and have selected this batch to coincide with the Independence Day holiday being celebrated this weekend.

Click on images to enlarge them.

This is the title page of a lead article in which both author and illustrator described the wartime scene in the nation's capitol after troops had been mobilized by enlistments and conscription and the city appeared to be bursting at its seams.

Here Wright manages to convey a scene with more life than any photo would be able to capture. Consider how dated photographs of that era appear in comparison to the pretty young woman accompanying the sailor.

A full page of work from his sketchbook.

An illustrated article in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1918. Cantonments refers to training camps, most of them hastily constructed to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding army.

A corporal reports to his commanding officer in this illustration while company clerks toil in the background and an officer approaches with more paperwork. Except for the tight collar uniforms and Smokey the Bear hats, it depicts a familiar scene on any army post at any time since then.

This illustration ran across two pages and unfortunately the inking was not the same on both sheets. It was titled, "A Friendly Invasion of the Sunny South," where this horse cavalry was in training.

"The Grim Visage of War Has Many Aspects" is the last page of the article. It looks to be infantry bayonet training, gas mask drill, and the firing of automatic weapons under the command of a nattily attired instructor.

Next: George Wright's sketches from U.S. Navy training camps in 1918.

Maurice Boutet de Monvel

His full name must be used to identify him since there was also his son, the painter Bernard Boutet de Monvel, whose style owed much to Maurice, and the writer Roger Boutet de Monvel who also could have been a son or a nephew. Maurice, aka Louis-Maurice, was the most popular French illustrator of the late nineteenth century and this drawing, which appeared as the lead article in Century Magazine for October 1896, has been an inspiration for more than a few illustrators of childrens' books. Click to enlarge the drawing and note his wonderful technique. It's from the lead article in Century Magazine for October 1896 entitled "About French Children" and depicts "a French mother and daughter hastening from class to class."

Maurice was born in Orléans, France, precisely in mid-century. His father had a distinguished musical career creating tenor parts for the composers Rossini and Meyerbeer; his grandfather a captain of engineers in the French army which fought on behalf of the colonists in our Revolutionary War; and a direct descendant of celebrated French literary and theatrical personalities.

He was a student of the noted painter Carolus Duran in 1875 but soon found his own way of working in a distinctive style all his own. This is entitled "Portrait of a Young Girl," and appeared in Century Magazine for June 1894 in an article devoted to his work which was written by his friend and American colleague Will H. Low, whose portrait of Boutet appears below. They had both studied with Duran in Paris.

This also appeared in Century Magazine for June 1894 in the same article about Boutet. It's a very nice picture in a terrible frame. Something tells me that there was a lot going on between subject and painter to get that tender expression.

From the same article, "The Blessing," one of 36 illustration for "Xavière," by Ferdinand Fabre. The story is about two lovers, Landry and Xavière and follows them throughout their lives. This is posed in a way that became almost obligatory for illustrators for the next hundred years.

Maurice Boutet de Monvel by Will H. Low, circa 1890.

My favorite. "Jacqueline and Miraut, from "Nos Enfants." Click to enlarge.

In Century Magazine for November 1896, Boutet de Monvel wrote and illustrated about Joan of Arc entitled "The National Hero of France." The illustration depicts Joan hearing celestial voices while meditating.

To see Boutet's illustrations in full color click on Joan.

"In the Time of the Restoration" from "Children's Costumes in the Nineteenth Century (from 1800 to 1870)" by Roger Boutet de Monvel. Click to enlarge. It's pretty stiff compared to the elder Boutet's other work but it's the only work I have in color. It appeared in Century Magazine for December 1904.

Here are some more from Harper's Monthly Magazine for September 1903. Click on images to enlarge.

Maurice Boutet de Monvel's legacy includes his son Bernard (see link above) and his nephew
Pierre Brissaud, a distinguished graphic designer and illustrator.

Anna Whelan Betts in her prime

I don’t know much about Anna Whelan Betts, but neither does anyone else. The Internet hasn’t been much help at all, so good luck with any searches you might undertake. I'm indebted to the Delaware Art Museum for her dates, and those of her younger sister, Ethel, below.

She was from Philadelphia and a student of Howard Pyle at Drexel Institute, and there is a photo in Henry Pitz's great book "The Brandywine Tradition," (published in 1968 by Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, copyright 1968 by Henry C. Pitz). She is seated on the grass in front of Pyle and is the only young woman in this section of the group photo. The year was 1903.

Her sister Ethel Betts, 1877-1959, was a fellow student who also went on to enjoy a successful career as an illustrator. Both women kept personal information to themselves so there is virtually nothing on record regarding dates of birth and death.

However, I’m not an academic – as if you couldn’t tell – and I would rather just show you some of her work and let it go at that, even if we have no idea of her actual birth date. Assuming that she were 22 when the photo was taken, her birth year could have been 1881. That would have made her in her early twenties when the following illustrations were done for Century Magazine.

Anna could draw and she could paint, and she knew how to put together a picture. These are not sketches, they are paintings, however sweet they might seem in this jaded later age.

She worked well into the 1920s but her output of this later period doesn't compare with her earlier work shown here.

"The Easter Bonnet," from Century Magazine for April 1904. Click on this and the following four images to enlarge.

"The New Game," from Century Magazine for August 1904.

"The Duet," from Century Magazine for October 1904.

"Christmas Callers," from Century Magazine for December 1904.

"The Valentine," from Century Magazine for February 1905.

"Nelly Custis in the Mount Vernon Garden," from Century Magazine for May 1906.

"The Dancing Master," a page from Harper's Monthly Magazine for January 1913.

A close-up of the illustration.

"The The Eternal Feminine," an inset illustration on a page from Harper's Monthly Magazine for December 1913. Click on image to enlarge.

Frank Brangwyn 1867-1956

Bud Plant has the best material on Frank Brangwyn, one of Britain's most renown painters, etchers and illustrators. Suffice to say he was much admired and has been duly imitated by generations of marine painters. The following are illustrations from a lead article entitled, "The Spanish Galleon and Pieces of Eight," by John C. Fitzpatrick in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for November 1907. Click on images to enlarge.

The caption reads, "The Immortal Fight of the Little 'Revenge'."

"The first galleons sailed from Cadiz in January of each year."

Frank Brangwyn in his studio, from Scribner's Monthly Magazine for January 1904. Not the size of the painting behind him. The article is full of gushing praise by the noted author and critic, M.H. Spielmann, who also compliments G.F. Watts as an artist of real greatness, and writes of Alfred Gilbert as "a sculptor such as is produced but once in a century."

"Queen Elizabeth goind aboard the 'Golden Hind'." From Scribner's Monthly Magazine for January 1904.

"The Departure of Lancaster for the East Indies," Scribner's Monthly Magazine for January 1904.

"Shipbuilding," from a charcoal drawing, Scribner's Monthly Magazine for January 1904.

The drawing of this piece is incredibly competent and is included to show how thorough Brangwyn was about his work. His talents were many though he had little, if any, formal art training.

He was born of Welsh parents living in Bruges, Belgium, where his father was a church decorator. The formidable William Morris engaged the young Brangwyn immediately as an examiner, rather than as a student, at the South Kensington Museum of London.

Young Frank decided to escape London and shipped aboard a merchant ship which plied the Mediterranean and the coast of South Africa. He compiled a portfolio of sketches during calls at exotic ports along the route.

There isn't enough space here to chronicle Brangwyn's accomplishments of his later years. Renowned as painter, etcher, decorative artist, he also designed furniture and textiles as well as jewelry.

This is entitled "The Bathers," and it appeared in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for September 1909. It's not one of Brangwyn's best in my opinion but I'm including it to show how sappy some of the images in the popular press had become. The style was copied by other illustrators, such as the famous Saturday Evening Post cover artist, J.C. Leyendecker.