Artist Feature: Helen Dryden

Helen Dryden was a successful woman artist of the 1920s and 1930s, doing fashion illustration for Vogue under contract from 1909-1922 and in the later 1920s also doing some industrial design. I just like the bright colors and whimsy of her illustrations - aren't they fun?

Artist Feature: Rolf Armstrong

Hello friends!

I'm now safely and successfully in England! If you haven't read on here before, I'll be here, in Oxford, until December studying for school. Two weeks before my classes are out, Gracie will be coming to England and after school ends we'll take a week to travel somewhere, anywhere, in Europe! It will be hard to choose where to go together, and it will be severely limited by our limited funds, but being together will make anywhere grand!

Not that this place isn't grand - my goodness, Oxford is absolutely stunning! I've been to England before, but only ever to London, and I think Oxford is far superior... I'm going to sound very tourist-y and gush-y and effusive and say that Oxford is just really, really, really beautiful. Ancient architecture everywhere, amazing gardens, the greenest grass, cobblestone streets... a totally different landscape from the mildly drought-ridden and extremely hot South US! Obviously the place is chock-full of history, much of it very interesting, and I learned just a fraction of it today when my fellow students and I got a tour of Oxford. I feel so foolish for not bringing my camera, because everything was picture-worthy, but I can always walk down there again... I'll just feel awkward doing it when I'm not in a group! 

Anyway, I'll put some pictures up soon, the house I'm staying in is also beautiful, it's this restored Victorian mansion and I've got the room right overlooking the lovely gardens in the back! 

Okay, onto the point of the post - another artist that I adore very much, Rolf Armstrong! I love his super saturated jewel tone palatte and the often dramatic way he paints his lovely ladies. He's pretty popular, so I'm sure most of you have seen some of his images at some point or another - but here are a few of my favorites!

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: John Miehle

I didn't learn John Miehle's name until recently, but I've known many of his images for awhile (and I'm sure lots of you will recognize some of them too). He was a still photographer for a ton of movies in the 30s and 40s, but according to his IMDb page, he was uncredited for almost all of them! I can't figure out why this was - perhaps this has to do with the different style of crediting in older films, and it didn't become standard to mention a film's still photographer until later? Anyway, he did the stills/publicity shots for a lot of really well-known and awesome films - Top Hat, Flying Down to Rio, Kitty Foyle, Stage Door, Swing Time, Follow the Fleet, Bachelor Mother, Vivacious Lady - and to point out a very obvious trend, was apparently attached by the hip to Ginger Rogers, career-wise! Seriously, go take a look at his IMDb page, and you'll see almost every movie Ginger did in the 30s, he was a still photographer for! Was she personally employing him? Anybody who can explain this, or who can say with certainty that it was purely coincidence or that they happened to work well together, let me know! Again the internet is pretty sparse with info on him.

Anyway, he did work on non-Ginger films - Rain, with Joan Crawford (some images from this displayed here), and Rope with Jimmy Stewart, for example. I've only included images of his that I saw were explicitly described as being his own, since I don't know if perhaps more than one still photographer was employed in the aforementioned films. Let me know if I've credited something incorrectly.

And now for his lovely images of beautiful people. Enjoy!

Stunning portrait. I don't normally think Joan Crawford is super beautiful, but this image is something else. 

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".

Artist Feature: Harrison Fisher

Born in New York in 1877, Harrison Fisher worked from the turn of the century until his death in 1934. And that's pretty much all I know about him. I'm not too interested in doing a bunch of research, I'm content to just admire his illustrations. Here are a few favorites:

"The Evening Hour" - I'm pretty sure this is my favorite of all. The best part? This was done for Cosmopolitan. Now I know this would never happen today, but come on, isn't this so much better than the stock photos of pretty but forgettable-looking people straddling each other in their underwear (Cosmo's illustration of choice nowadays)? This illustration leaves more to the imagination, but I wouldn't say it's prudishly subtle - I mean, with that image, and that caption, you get the idea. But its lovely to look at at the same time!

I just love this - I can't settle on what adjective describes it best, it can be two totally different things, depending on how you look at it. Romantic or humorous? Dark or whimsical? Beautiful or beautiful? 

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.)