Artist Feature: Charles Gates Sheldon

Greetings Blogoverse!

We’ve decided to start a series on illustrators and painters and photographers whose work we really love and admire. Most of them will be posted over the next few weeks, but from time to time as we discover/are reminded of new artists, we’ll add more. Hopefully this doesn’t bore you – but I think these artists will have wide appeal to the vintage crowd, after all, all the ones we’re featuring are vintage aged or antique! 

So here’s the first artist: Charles Gates Sheldon. I don’t know much about him (he hasn’t a Wikipedia page! Gasp!)… He was born in 1889 (one site says 1894?), died in 1960 (another says 1961!). The height of his fame as an illustrator was around the 20s and 30s, and he painted a lot of female celebrities and magazines covers, but he did work before and after those times. And that’s about all I know, besides that his portrait illustrations were stunning. Here are a few of my favorites, below. 

Enjoy!

The wonderful Katherine Hepburn.

Gorgeous Jean Harlow.

Whaddya know! The illustrator of our blog header! (Not specifically for us - I wish! - but you know what I mean.)

A pretty lady - not sure who this is, if anybody knows, let me know!

Katherine again.

Claudette Colbert - one of my top favorite screen ladies.

Harlow again.

The place I found this image said it was Jean Fay - but I can't find her on Google web or Google images anywhere (except for this picture)! I thought she looked a bit Myrna Loy-ish, but maybe that's just me?

One place I found this picture said it was Sidney Fox - I found very little on her on Google, but she is real! The few images of her (she died very young) show she was in fact as pretty as this illustration.

Not sure who this is, she looks familiar but I couldn't get a definite identification from any of the sources.

Carole Lombard.

Different than his usual style. Perhaps this was done before or after the era when most of his famous work was done?

Beautiful Myrna Loy.

- Emily