I'm pretty sure that Frederick Richardson isn't a name that most of us would be familiar
with and yet he was among the most successful American children's illustrators of the golden
age.
He was born in Chicago in 1862 and in his youth he studied at both the St. Louis School
of Fine Arts, and the Académie Julian in Paris.
Once he had finished his own education he went straight into 7 years of teaching at
the Chicago Art Institute.
In 1893 he started work as a newspaper illustrator for the Chicago Daily News and he continued
to do so up to the turn of the century.
In 1903 he relocated to New York and at the advanced age of 41 he began a career as a
children's illustrator.
He couldn't have wished for a better project to begin with, because in that year he was
commissioned to illustrate L. Frank Baum's latest book Queen Zixi of Ix.
Baum was a household name at the time as he had recently enjoyed immense success with
his book the Wizard of Oz.
And Richardson rose to the challenge with a series of elegant fantasy line drawings,
which were first published as a magazine serial and in 1905 as a book.
This high profile and successful commission gave his career a spectacular boost, and in
the wake of its success many others followed.
Richardson may have been a late starter but he made up for lost time with his illustrations
for the stories of Hans Christian Andersen.
And in rapid succession he created illustrated editions of other children's classics, including
a particularly attractive and absorbing series of line and watercolour full page images for
an edition of the Mother Goose Rhymes.
His line drawing was extremely controlled and expressive, and he used it to good effect
with the monochromes, half tones and spot colour images he created.
His dexterity with the use of watercolour was equally sophisticated and combined with
the line to make for well rounded and plausible fantasy characters.
Many other collections such as the Queen's Museum by Frank R Stockton were published
over the next two decades, and although there are too many to feature here they all displayed
an enviable fusion of imaginative characterisation and technical accomplishment.
His work for Georgene Faulkner's 1928 collection of ancient Japanese stories drew considerable
praise and for this project he turned his watercolour technique to the East with considerable
credibility.
And when she wrote a collection of Indian tales in the following year he successfully
absorbed that stylistic influence into his illustrations and page decorations.
During his career Richardson had little need to venture into other areas of commercial
illustration, but he did create a particularly absorbing series of fantasy themed talcum
powder press ads .
In 1930 his visual interpretation of Collodi's Pinocchio was published and it was yet another
vividly realised visual narrative.
And up until Disney's 1940 animation it was considered the definitive version of the story
in America.
And despite his relatively short career in children's illustration Richardson had managed
to illustrate dozens of books by the time of his death in New York in 1937 at the age
of 75.
Franz Jüttner was born in 1865 in Posen Germany and once he'd finished school
at the age of 15 he left home to join his older brother in Berlin .
He worked briefly as a lithographer before an equally brief apprenticeship with the painter
Ludwig Burger, after which he attempted to start a career as an artist.
He had no success at all as a painter but in 1887 when he was 22 years old some of his
drawings were accepted by the satirical magazine Kladderadatsch and overnight he became a regular
contributor.
Early on Jüttner's technique was virtually identical to that of his contemporaries, with
considerable use of tightly controlled hatching to create solidity and tonal effects.
But as time went on he developed a more modernist and distinctive visual identity using a far
more economical line.
His work for Kladderadatsch came to the attention of the two most prominent humour magazines
of the time - Fliegende Blätter and its rival Lustige Blätter. And they too commissioned
him frequently.
But of the three it was Lustige Blätter who became his most frequent and regular client.
From 1905 onwards he also began illustrating books for children, and he had similar success
in that arena, with a particularly popular re-telling of Snow White in 1910.
But the incisive satirical images he created for Lustige Blätter remained his first priority,
and his application of limited spot colour was particularly effective and aesthetically
pleasing.
Despite the success he was enjoying as an illustrator he continued to be unable to interest
anyone in his painting and this he found particularly frustrating.
When war came in 1914 he redoubled his efforts as a cartoonist and created hundreds of propagandist
images for the magazine, with many portrayals of the British and their allies cast in the
role of the bad guys of the conflict.
But unfortunately for Jüttner in 1917 Lustige Blätter ceased publication, and this left
a large seemingly irreplaceable hole in his client base.
Not long after he suffered a severe nervous breakdown from which he never fully recovered.
On the advice of his doctor he and his family went to live in the quiet rural town of Wolfenbüttel
a year later.
From there he continued to create occasional illustration, usually for children, but with
Lustige Blätter gone he had no home for his barbed satire and the volume dwindled rapidly
to nothing.
He did continue to paint though, but never had any success with it up to his death in
1926 at the age of 61.
There's so little information about American illustrator R. John Holmgren I can't even
tell you what the initial R stands for.
He was born in St Paul Minnisota in 1897 and attended the art institute there.
In 1919 he moved to New York where he continued his studies at Columbia University and the
Art Students' League.
And as the 1920s unfolded commissions started to come his way.
One of his most significant and enduring successes was with the humour magazine Judge, and although
there was little that was inherently comical about his work his illustrations featured
on many of their covers.
Although Holmgren's elegant figures were what you would broadly call representational, they
were not attempts at realism.
They were usually elongated in a similar way to that frequently found in fashion illustration,
and his remarkably fine inked line work was always intentionally visible.
But perhaps most significantly he worked in luminous washes of watercolour, which demanded
a more spontaneous approach than his oil painting contemporaries were using.
Some - and probably most - of his illustration could be classified as pinup art, even if
his ladies were never naked.
Like the earlier Gibson Girls they were portrayed as desirable young women but collectively
they were modern independent and frequently adventurous.
Few if any looked like they lived just to please men.
In the 1920s he was also getting commissions for advertising work, especially for press
ads in the very magazines he was also illustrating.
In the later years of the decade he also created similar cover art for other magazines.
The humour magazine Life regularly featured his females on several issues around this
time, and so did Collier's if not with the same frequency.
So into the 1930s and the 40s Holmgren was kept busy with both his magazine and advertising
work and he was widely considered to be one of the most sought after illustrators of the
time.
During World War 2 he also contributed some lightweight amusing propaganda for poster
campaigns such as this comical Loose Talk Can Cost Lives poster.
In his later career he created what was arguably his most popular and enduring ad campaign
for White Rock sparkling water.
The company had been using a very dated looking image of a water fairy and Holmgren was chosen
to update and apply the character in an extensive light comic ad campaign, and his creation
proved immensely successful for the company.
By the time it was over Holmgren's career had managed to span the decades without ever
looking out of date until he gave up working in the later 1950s and he died in 1963 at
the age of 66.
French illustrator Raymond Savignac was one of those illustrators whose work was never
about drawing or representation.
Whether he chose to draw badly in technical terms or simply wasn't very good at it there's
no evidence either way.
But deliberate or not I'm sure some viewers won't care for his brand of simplistic heavily
abstracted image making.
He was born in 1907 in Paris and when he left school at 15 he got a steady but tedious job
drawing maps for the Paris transport system.
But in the evenings he would spend his time drawing the patrons of the cafe run by his
parents and he also took some classes in industrial design.
Before long he gave up his job and tried to get established as an illustrator, but the
small amount of freelance work he managed to generate was not enough to live on.
In 1933, frustrated by his lack of success, Savignac showed his work toA. M. Cassandre
at his Paris agency.
Cassandre was easily the most successful Art Deco posterist in Europe at this time, and
luckily for Savignac he understood and liked his work.
In an act of remarkable professional generosity he gave him regular commissions, helped him
in the execution of some of the posters, and introduced him to his influential friends
and business associates.
At this time Savignac's work was manifestly influenced by the powerful design aesthetic
Cassandre himself had set in motion a decade earlier, but even early on a more humorous
tendency was also evident.
In 1938 Cassandre left for America, and a year later the Second World War began, and
Savignac like others in France at that time had to put his career on hold.
As luck would have it in 1942 Savignac's work was spotted by advertising agent Robert Guérin,
who like Cassandre was impressed with his bold simplicity and surreal humour.
In the next few years he effectively became Savignac's patron, providing him with any
number of high profile advertising commissions.
When the Second World War ended the French began to regain their joie de vivre, and the
prevailing upbeat mood made the perfect environment for the playful humour of Savignac's work.
By now the Cassandre influence had all but vanished and had been replaced by his radically
unreal cartoon approach.
Savignac had no time for the conventions of perspective or reality.
Flesh was rarely flesh coloured and the colour itself was frequently applied with casual
disdain for the ragged line meant to contain it.
And it was rare that he would set his characters in any kind of background, preferring to sit
them on a plain bright colour.
His posters were early examples of what later came to be called conceptual illustration.
This is not a particular visual style and can be anything from crude doodles such as
in Savignac's work through to hyper-real painting. But its defining feature is that it plays
with our expectations, and is frequently humorous.
Although his entry into illustration had been far from easy, Savignac was now a ubiquitous
presence in France, and his posters dominated the walls and hoardings of French cities.
In the 1970s, when photography was making life very difficult for more representational
illustrators, the camera was no match for the direct appeal of his brightly coloured
graphic images and he continued to be popular.
In 1979 he left Paris and settled in the seaside town of Trouville in Normandy, and although
he was in his 70s he continued to accept commissions. In a 50 year career he had created more than
600 posters.
Raymond Savignac died in 2002 in Trouville at the age of 95, and the town has adopted
his memory and his work as their own I'm pleased to say.
And that's all for now but I hope to be with you again in a few weeks with more of one
sort or another.