French humorous illustrator Lucien Métivet was born in Paris in 1863 and other than that
nothing seems to be recorded about his early life.
But in 1882 when he was 19 he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Paris
and followed his studies with a year of military service.
This would have taken him to some time around 1886 or 7
but the earliest dated examples I've been able to find are some posters from1890 onwards.
It's a guess on my part but it's likely he would have been working to
get established as an illustrator and the evidence simply hasn't survived.
In 1893 his striking poster for the cabaret performer Eugénie Buffet
brought him to wider attention and constituted a real breakthrough in his career.
The client liked the poster enough to request another,
and with this exposure many other clients began lining up to commission him.
Métivet’s first cover for the humour weekly Le Rire appeared in 1894.
And he quickly became a frequent contributor to the magazine, with many
covers and satirical interior illustrations to his credit in the years that followed.
Within a couple of years he was also creating comical illustration for other
prominent satirical magazines including L'Assiette Au Beurre and La Baionnette.
And in this immensely prolific period Métivet also took several commissions to
illustrate works of fiction, some of which was for children and some for adults only,
but all of it humorous to one extent or another.
His popularity continued and grew throughout the first decade of the 20th century,
and in addition to his commercial commissions he also published albums of collections of his work
which sold well and greatly increased his earnings.
The posters he created during his career were invariably compelling and well composed images,
and they were undoubtedly created directly onto lithographic stones,
with additional print runs for each of the colours.
But when it came to his book and magazine work it seems he was working with pen or brush on paper.
The line work was invariably calligraphic
and frequently enhanced with crayon or charcoal shading.
And when using colour, which was much more frequently,
he applied transparent washes washes over the line.
On occasion there was also flatter, more graphic illustration created
as monochrome drawings which then had spot colours added at printing.
But whatever his methods all of his work was never less than visually arresting and eloquent.
During the first world war he created several covers for La Baionnette
and even more for Le Rire Rouge, and although one or two remained staunchly upbeat, predictably
most of these images used humour which was considerably darker and vehemently anti-German.
Once the war had ended he returned again to more lighthearted material,
and in addition work for his usual client base he also wrote and illustrated some of his own books,
including the satirical Jean-Qui-Lit et Snobinet, which were also popular successes.
Métivet died in 1932 at the age of 69 and had managed to create a vast amount
of influential comic illustration in a career of nearly 40 years.
American illustrator Louis M. Glackens was born in 1866 in Philadelphia,
the older brother of the painter William Glackens.
As soon as Louis left school he immediately started working as a professional illustrator
for local newspapers, despite having had no formal art education whatsoever.
But I haven't managed to unearth anything by
him that's verifiable before 1892 when he was already 26 years old.
So just like Lucien Métivet it's quite probable his earlier work simply hasn't survived.
In that year his pen and ink illustrations for the bizarrely titled humorous book
The Last Tenet Imposed upon the Khan of Tomathoz, were published, and they were well received.
More significantly He also began working for the humour magazine Puck around the same time,
and he rapidly became one of their most popular and enduring artists.
During his two decades with the magazine Glackens created a vast number of humorous illustrations
poking fun at a wide range of subjects, both frivolous and serious.
His monochrome pen, brush and ink drawings demonstrated his particularly
fluid calligraphic line work, and with a wide range of precise expressive strokes
he was able to create extremely plausible solidity and suggestion of animation in his characters.
But the majority of his images for the magazine were in colour,
and for these he applied transparent washes over the line,
but with a much flatter graphic finish than that of most of his contemporaries.
Consequently, other than the now dated nature of his subjects and settings
his work looks remarkably modern more than a century later.
During his time at Puck he created a series of covers in colour which in themselves
constituted a large and particularly impressive body of comic illustration,
and in addition there were a large number of impressive and complex double page spreads
commenting on the issues and politics of the time.
Among other features there were also narrative comic strips and a series titled In Colonial
Days which comically portrayed the arrival and early exploits of the founding fathers in America.
Unfortunately for Glackens and his colleagues at Puck in 1915 the magazine
changed hands to a new publisher, who allowed the magazine to wither and die not long after.
This of course created a large hole in his professional life so Glackens compensated
with a sideways move into animation, and he was involved with over 20 films for Bray Studios.
Whether he worked on the clip I'm showing and in what capacity is anybody's guess
but it does date from the years of his involvement and is typical of the studio's early output.
Although Puck had been by far his primary source of income,
in addition to his animation work he did continue to create colour and monochrome illustrations
for other publications and the last piece of dated work I found was in 1929.
I don't know if he retired or just ran out of clients,
but Louis Glackens died not long after in 1933 at the age of 67 and
it's hard to think of an illustrator more deserving of greater exposure and respect.
Children's illustrator and writer Margaret Tarrant was born in London in 1888,
the daughter of the successful watercolour artist Percy Tarrant.
In her teens she studied at Heatherley’s School of Art,
followed by more study at Guildford School of Art.
Her first success came when she was just 20 years old, and she was commissioned
to illustrate an edition of Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, which was published in 1908.
This was a highly prestigious entrance into the world of commercial illustration
and the series of charming watercolour images she created for the book
immediately established her as an illustrator of considerable merit.
And in 1910 she followed this early success with an equally atmospheric visualisation
of the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. This book also proved to be very popular.
And with a remarkable demonstration of productivity in the same year she also
illustrated another children's classic the stories of French writer Charles Perrault,
another perfect pairing of illustrator and writer.
It was obvious from the assurance of the work in these books she was
already fully in control of her technique
and despite her relative youth it seemed as if she had been illustrating books for decades.
In 1912 she illustrated a version of the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamlin written by the poet
Robert Browning, and in 1916 she became another in an apparently endless line of
illustrators to tackle Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
And once again she created a series of agreeable fantasy images, the equal certainly of
most other attempts, even if the surreal menace of the Tenniel originals had
evaporated completely in her more child-friendly visualisation.
Tarrant was adept as a line-only illustrator and most of her books featured monochrome
spot illustrations and silhouettes. But it was the overwhelming volume and quality of her
delicate enchanting watercolour work which made her reputation.
Throughout the 1920s she continued to produce yet more book illustration for specific
stories and some more generic volumes including various collections of nursery rhymes
and an edition of Mother Goose in 1929.
And the enduring popularity of her illustrations led to other printed merchandised material
such as postcards, greeting cards and calendars featuring reprints of her existing work,
and this generated yet more income. And you can still buy them almost a century later.
Following a trip to the Holy Land in the mid 1930s she began creating religious
watercolour paintings . These were sold as framed prints and as with her other work,
they continued to be popular into the 1950s.
Sadly, at that time her general health and particularly her eyesight were deteriorating
rapidly and in 1958 she went to join her friend and fellow illustrator Molly Brett
in Cornwall, where she died a year later at the age of 71.
When it comes to Japanese illustrators such as
Shigeru Hatsuyama I have to admit I'm out of my depth.
I'm not even sure I've got his name the right way round.
And it's fairly likely that there will be only
occasional connection between the narration and the pictures shown.
But his work is strangely compelling so I think it's worth making a fool of myself over.
Shigeru was born in Tokyo in 1897 and at the age of only 10
he began creating patterns for kimonos at a local workshop and he stayed there for the next 5 years.
At which point he had some tuition from the painter and illustrator Ikawa Sengai.
He struggled to make any real progress as an illustrator,
and although he was submitting drawings to magazines everything he submitted was rejected.
And to make some money he returned briefly to designing Kimonos,
and even tried unsuccessfully to be an actor.
But his luck started to change in 1919 when he was 22 years old.
In that year he was commissioned to illustrate the cover of the first
issue of the children's magazine Otogi No Sekai which translates into English as Fairy World.
And he went on to create every cover up to its final issue in 1923.
He also began creating limited edition woodblock prints around this time.
Some were published in a short-lived arts magazine but quite a few were sold to collectors.
And the additional income from his art career
contributed greatly to making him more financially stable.
There were children's books too, and among them what to western eyes is a rather obtuse
but absorbing interpretation of the Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, published in 1925.
In 1928 he began working for the children's magazine Komodo No Kuni,
meaning Children's Land and it was the vast amount
of imagery he produced for them up to 1936 which really made his reputation.
Other than the obvious woodblock work I'm struggling with the specifics of his use of media.
Some is undoubtedly pen ink and watercolour but there are other examples which may or may not
be solid blocks of painted colour and there is also evidence of mixed media and collage.
But whatever he was using the results were astonishingly diverse and provided clear
evidence of a powerful creative imagination and a highly developed aesthetic sensibility.
During the years of the second world war Shigeru didn't create any illustration
and concentrated entirely on his woodblock prints.
When peace returned he did illustrate more books
but it was primarily printmaking which continued to occupy his time.
And Shigeru Hatsuyama died in 1973 at the age of 76 following a fire at his home.
And that wraps up this quartet and I hope to see you with the next 4 soon.
Thanks as ever for watching and goodbye for now.