The Cats and the Berries: 1910s

Showing posts with label 1910s. Show all posts

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Artist Feature: Enoch Bolles

My blogging may be rather sparse over the next two weeks as I'll be moving back to Atlanta and then immediately heading out to Oregon for a few days for my cousin's wedding...

So - I'll leave you with some eye-candy: the gorgeous and, ahem, very naughty artwork of Enoch Bolles! One of the most successful earlier glamour artists, he did cover art for tons of magazines in his heyday (the nineteen-teens through the 1940s), but he also did a lot of advertising work - an interesting and unfortunate little piece of trivia is that his "Windy Girl" work for Zippo lighters is often mis-credited to Alberto Vargas (who was in fact very influenced by Bolles).

While gathering up some pictures from around the web for this post, I happened across a fabulous blog dedicated to his artwork! Check it out if you like his images, there is a lot of good information (and tons of rare images) there.

I just love the utter richness of his work: the jewel-toned color palates, the "overripe girls" (a perfect description from the folks at the Bolles blog), the impossible/ridiculous but wonderfully fantastical poses and situations of the Bolles girls. And as it is with any pinup work, his portrayals of the female figure are unrealistic: the girls have cartoonishly beautiful faces and impossible curves that could make Rita Hayworth look boyish, but that doesn't spoil it for me - in fact, its part of what I enjoy about his work, and good pinup art in general. It's not supposed to be realistic, its idealized and over-the-top and it doesn't take itself too seriously.

But enough talk, here are just a few of the many beautiful illustrations done by Bolles. Believe it or not, I actually tried to choose his less-naughty/suggestive pieces - Google his name and there is some much more blush-inducing work of his out there!

Enjoy!

1941. This gorgeous lady reminds me a bit of an inflated Hedy Lamarr... inflated boobs, inflated lips..

1916. "Look before you leap this year!"
This is definitely one of my top favorites! Because the first time I saw this I laughed out loud, very loud. And I still audibly chuckle most times I look at this. The guy's face is priceless, and it's a moment perfectly suspended in time, both sentimentally beautiful and genuinely humorous, something that I think is very difficult to pull off in images and is thus very impressive to me. I know the feeling of the guy in the water - I always get afraid of getting accidentally jumped on by friends at the pool, and I also always check the water before I jump off a diving board!

Artist Feature: Chéri Hérouard

Chéri Hérouard (1881-1961) was a French artist known for his numerous illustrations for the magazine La Vie Parisienne. Here are some of my favorite of his works - they're sometimes humorous, often sentimental, and always whimsical!

Artist Feature: Charles Dana Gibson

Charles Dana Gibson was an illustrator whose work was prominent from the 1880s to the end of WWI. I love his images for their humor, wry wit, and aesthetic loveliness (I do love the Gibson Girl look!), and I hope you enjoy them too!

Artist Feature: J. C. Leyendecker

Here are some beautiful illustrations from J. C. Leyendecker, the man responsible for creating the Arrow Collar Man and over 400 magazine covers from 1896-1950. The peak of his career was in the 1920s, and he would become a chief source of inspiration for (and friend of) Norman Rockwell. Unlike the other artists we've featured so far, there is considerably more information available on Leyendecker. I just used his Wikipedia page for the brief little introduction above.

I just love this one!

Artist Feature: Leo Fontan

Leo Fontan, a French painter, is an artist I've recently discovered and am quite mad about. His illustrations/paintings are just gorgeous, simple yet full of eye-catching details, and have a whimsy and often a sense of mischief that I love. If you look him up on Google images, you will find that he appears to be a "leg man" - I swear about 1/3 of the images were these stocking-clad leg portraits he's done! Anyway, I gathered up some other ones because his people portraits are his best, I think! From what I could find, he was born in France in 1883, and died in 1965. Apparently he started losing his eyesight towards the end of his life, but he continued painting. And no wonder! This was pretty much all I could discover, there was only a French Wikipedia page on him.
Enjoy!

Subtitle translated reads "Queen for a Day".

Okay, I took French for 8 years but I'm not sure about this translation - Title: "Honeymoon".
Subtitle/caption:
- "I am sure that you don't love me anymore"
- "But why, my dear?"
- "Ah well... one couldn't dispute this since this morning!"
... this is all with high-school level training in French, so take it with a grain of salt.

Translated, the title and caption read "Blue, White, Red" - "The Cockade of Mimi Pinson".

A Feast for the Eyes

Recently I’ve become rather smitten with early 20^th century illustration. For awhile I pretty much exclusively paid attention to photographs (film stills, studio portraits, personal photos, etc) in my quest to satiate my aesthetic appetite, but (to continue the metaphor) I feel as if I’ve discovered a new and exotic cuisine in illustration.

Below are some images I gathered the other day from Silverbluestar's Flickr stream. I just love the colors and whimsy and romance – in both senses of the word. I hope you enjoy them too!