100 Years of Illustration

George Wright - 5 - New York, New York

Edward Gerber has just published an excellent book about George Wright entitled An Artist's Life Examined. It's 8.5 x 8.5 inches square, paperback, 92 pages, many of them in color. The price is US$19.95 plus postage. Email him at edwardgerber@starpower.net or write to him by snail mail. His address is 4619 Butterworth Place N.W., Washington DC 20016.

"On an East Side Street." Click on this and the following images to enlarge them.

Probably one of Wright’s best collection of notebook illustrations, I leave you with these to enjoy for the month of August while some of us quit work for a few weeks.

The article, “The Drum Beat of the Town,” was written by a Nelson Lloyd (about whom I was unable to find any information). It appeared in the November 1909 issue of Scribner’s Monthly Magazine, as accompaniment to Wright’s excellent work.

To quote some of it, “. . . . Yet New York gets in the blood. The senseless hurry of it–our critics always point out our lack of repose–the rush for wealth, the barbaric opulence, the obtrusive poverty–how often we hear them excoriated! And smiling we admit it all. We march to a quick drumbeat and perhaps to barren conquests. But there is something martial in our very noises; something of the fight in our stirring life. . . .”

To put this hubris in perspective, read how Jacob Riis describes the stirring lives of the desperate poor in his exposé of how the other half lived in New York City at the time

The Majesty of the Law.

More Snow and Along the Waterfront.

Fifth Avenue.

Under the Elevated.

On the Stage of a Bowery Theatre.

Comedians.

Some other New York City types.

Have a great summer vacation.

George Wright - 4

In case you might be wondering why I'm devoting so much space to George Wright, it's because his extraordinarily long and productive career has been largely ignored by those chronicling the story of illustration in the United States, which IMHO is the pictures-on-paper equivalent of what The Great American Songbook is to our popular music. And, besides, I really like his work.

This and the following two illustrations are from "The Majestic Movies," by Harrison Rhodes published in Harper's Monthly Magazine for January 1919. Click on this image to enlarge it.

Click on image to enlarge.

The following illustrations are from an article in Harper's Monthly Magazine for December 1920. Click on the images to enlarge them.

"There is no peace in Chicago."

"At that auction I met Uncle Sam." I have no idea what that refers to.

"The social life was concentrated round the village drug store." Don't forget that the year was 1920 and it was illegal in the entire country to purchase alcoholic beverages of any kind. A great many Americans had no other choice than to slake their thirsts with carbonated beverages, milk shakes and ice cream floats. I remember those little round marble-topped tables and the uncomfortable twisted wire chairs. It was in the days before air-conditioning and the shops were cooled by large electric fans. As recent as 60 years ago at the old Boston Post the press room was cooled by fans blowing across cakes of ice.

George Wright - 3

"The appeal of the circus is perennial throughout the land," from "Hail, Columbia!" in Harper's Monthly Magazine for January 1921. Click on image to enlarge.

"The national restlessness makes for a gayety and charm of its own," from "Hail, Columbia!" in Harper's Monthly Magazine for January 1921. Click on image to enlarge.

"A little aerialist lay curled like a sick kitten on her trunk," from "Circus Folks are Folks," in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1924. Click on image to enlarge.

"Pausing with a comical gesture, he seized her hand and waved it," from "Circus Folks are Folks," in Harper's Monthly Magazine for August 1924.

From a story entitled, "The Anachronism," in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for May 1910. Click on image to enlarge.

"Maloney sabred the gunner who has struck Hunt down," from "The Anachronism," in Scribner's Monthly Magazine for May 1910. Click on image to enlarge.

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."

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.