George Wright - 2

Harper's Monthly Magazine ran a companion piece to George Wright's prior illustrated article depicting training at army camps. This one concerns navy recruits and rates getting acquainted with each other while training. The Armistice which ended World War I was signed at 11 AM, 11 November 1918, the month the article appeared.

While there may have been photos involved, the drawings look spontaneous, and that's what counts in sketches. Wright's sketches are among his very best work, in my opinion.

Click on images to enlarge.

Look at these guys. They're perfect.

Wright even sketched from the brig.

These sketches appeared in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for August 1906. They are the only pages I have that were not ruined by printing ink offsetting on facing pages. In 1906 it was remarkable to find color printing in the popular press, let alone quality output. The article is entitled "In Foreign Streets by Royal Cortissoz, illustrated from the pages in George Wright's sketch-book."

Cortissoz was a literary lion, lecturer and critic who wrote biographies of the sculptor August Saint-Gaudens in 1907 and the painter John LaFarge in 1911, and books about fine arts including American Artists, 1923; Personalities in Art, 1925; and The Painter's Craft, 1930.

In the article, Cortissoz says this of Wright's work, ". . . Mr. Wright's drawings are not studies of costume; they are portraits of people.

"They deserve to be described as such because, spontaneous and slight as they are, they nevertheless render a great deal, especially in carriage, in movement, that belong to the very essence of his subject."