Monro Orr was one of the most talented and popular British illustrators of the early
20th century, and yet curiously he now seems to be almost completely unknown.
He was was born in the town of Irvine in Scotland in 1874 and he attended Glasgow School of
Art between 1894 and 1900.
Why he spent 6 years there is anybody's guess.
And other than the date of his death that’s about all the biography I've been able to
find.
As he completed his art studies in 1900 its a fair assumption that his career began not
long after, but whether the rise was meteoric or slow is anybody's guess.
The earliest dated work I've found is a series of watercolour illustrations created for the
book Georges by Alexander Dumas, published in 1904.
Following this there's an improbable gap of 8 years before his next verified project,
a collection of pen and ink line illustrations for the book The Ballad of Jan Van Hunks by
Gabriel Rossetti was published in 1912.
Several dates are given for the publication of his illustrated edition of Grimm's Fairy
Tales, some as late as the 1930s.
But 1914 seems to be the most likely year of it first being published and the later
dates would be for the numerous reprints.
But whenever they were created the book contained a large volume of skilfully executed pen and
ink line drawings, as well as some particularly accomplished and absorbing watercolours.
There's no visual evidence of magazine or advertising work, but this would not have
made him unusual among his contemporaries, many of whom also concentrated exclusively
on book illustration.
In 1921 he illustrated Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with a body of very plausible representational
watercolour illustrations, and this edition was successful enough to warrant further reprints.
I cant find a date or even what its function was but his map of the black death was a very
absorbing marriage of education and entertainment.
During his career Orr created many new illustrated volumes of children's classics, including
an evocative collection of Hans Christian Andersen's tales in 1925, and an edition of
the Mother Goose rhymes, which was published in 1930.
This was undoubtedly his most prolific period and in 1933 a new edition of the tales from
The Arabian Nights was published.
For this book Orr created many beautifully rendered watercolours which captured the romance
of this oriental fantasy to perfection.
And his 1934 visualisation of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island provided yet more
confirmation that he was at the height of his narrative powers.
The last dated work I've found was Monro Orr's Alphabet book from 1937, but it's hard to
imagine that he created nothing else after that year, considering that he didn't die
until 1955 when he was 81 years old.
But like so much about his life it looks like that's just something else we'll never know.
Harry Clarke was born in Dublin in 1889, where his father ran a successful church
decoration and stained glass business.
By the age of 14 Harry was already working as an apprentice at his father's workshop
and by the age of 20 in 1909 he was taking his
own commissions to design stained glass windows.
He also took some evening classes at Dublin's College of Art and Design, and in his early
20s he he moved to London in the hope of finding work as a book illustrator.
In 1913 He undertook a private commission to illustrate an edition of Alexander Pope's
The Rape of the Lock, but unfortunately it was never published.
And in the following year he began creating illustrations for Coleridge's The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner. But work on the book was suspended when he was given a much bigger
contract to illustrate The tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
That project kept him occupied for 2 full years and the book was published with great
critical success in 1916.
The book featured a mix of full colour pages and some dazzlingly complex pen and ink monochromes,
and this collection of compelling illustrations was largely responsible for launching his
career in publishing.
Unfortunately in that year all his work on the Ancient mariner was destroyed during the
Dublin riots and the book never saw the light of day.
He followed up his success with the Andersen book with an edition of Edgar Allan Poe's
Tales of Mystery and Imagination, an ideal project for Clarke's decadent gothic aesthetic.
Initially he was restricted to line only but given the level of Clarke's technical and
creative abilities with pen and ink the absence of colour was no loss at all.
Some years later though it was reprinted with colour illustrations and this edition elevated
his already solid reputation as a highly creative and skilful illustrator even higher.
The influence of both Aubrey Beardsley and Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen was obvious
in Clarke's approach.
But these influences were absorbed into his own creative judgement andtechnique, giving
all his work a distinctive and richly textured appeal.
He returned to lighter fantasy in 1922 with both colour plates and monochromes for a collection
of the Fairy Tales of Perrault. And Clarke's singular immensely detailed visualisations
of these stories sold in large numbers.
He continued to work with stained glass throughout his career but book illustration dominated
his creative output.
Possibly his best known work was his version of Goethe's Faust. This was published in 1925
and the menace of this tale of a pact with the Devil was ideal material for Clarke's
dramatic approach.
Although illustrated by many others before and since Clarke's edition still stands out
as one of the more memorable.
His illustrated Poems of Algernon Charles Swinburne was published in 1928 and sadly
it turned out to be his last project.
Just like Aubrey Beardsley and others Clarke had contracted tuberculosis in his youth and
he succumbed to the disease in 1931 at the age of only 41.
I'm quite prepared to concede that the Russian-born illustrator and designer known as Erté will
be far from unsung to those with an interest in Art Deco.
But given his significance within the movement I'm including him for those who aren't already
aware of his immense contribution.
He was born as Romain de Tirtoff in St. Petersburg in 1892 into a distinguished and extremely
wealthy aristocratic Russian family. But in 1907 at the age of 15 he travelled to Paris,
where he he created the first of a series of Beardsley-inspired sculptures.
He felt far more at home in the decadent bohemian art community in Montmartre than he had in
St. Petersburg and in 1910 he relocated to Paris with his partner, the Russian Prince
Nicolas Ouroussoff.
It was on his arrival in Paris he began using the name Erté, a French pronunciation of
the letters R and T, having promised his father he wouldn't ruin the Tirtoff family name with
his openly homosexual relationship with the Prince.
From 1913 to 1914 he created fashion illustrations for the clothes designer Paul Poiret, but
when war broke out in 1914 Erté and the Prince relocated to Monte Carlo for the duration.
And while living there he secured his first substantial contract with Harper's Bazaar
magazine in 1915.
This would be the first of many and up to 1937 he created more than 200 stylish and
influential covers.
His illustrations were widely admired as the very essence of modernism and he began appearing
regularly in other publications, including Vogue.
Erté's images always began as quite gestural sketches, which he would then formalise into
more precise coloured areas, usually but not always painted flat with gouache.
Like Beardsley, his graceful curves were executed with astonishing precision, and most commonly
using coloured rather than black line.
He also enjoyed considerable success designing exclusive jewellery for those who could afford
it, and his costumes and sets were featured in various Hollywood productions of the 1920s.
And his natural flair for film and stage design would increasingly be put to use and dominate
his output as his career progressed, with many commissions for stage and costume work
for the ballet and opera throughout Europe in the following decades.
In 1933 Prince Ouroussoff died, and Erte was greatly distressed by the loss of his partner.
But he nevertheless carried on working and his reputation continued to spread on an international
basis.
During the second world war he maintained a low profile while much of France was under
German rule, although privately he was living as ostentatiously as ever.
After the war, the reputation he had built earlier was more than enough to sustain his
success for another couple of decades.
Ertés original artwork had always been considered collectible, and in addition to the painted
originals he also sold limited edition lithographs.
And some of his work was being re-created as sculpture and sold at extraordinary prices
too.
Erté continued to work on a wide range of projects, and was held in high regard throughout
his remarkably long and productive life, and he finally passed away in 1990 at the age
of 98.
Like quite a few others who are labelled as pin-up artists Al Buell was actually capable
of much more than illustrations of provocative females, although it has to be said that pin-ups
were certainly his primary source of income.
He was born in Kansas in 1910, and he grew up in Oklahoma .
Other than a handful of lessons at the Art Institute in Chicago Buell was self taught
and despite the lack of a formal art education he set out to forge a career making pictures
for money.
In 1935, Buell and his wife moved to Chicago, where he got a job as a commercial artist
for the Stevens Hall Biondi Studio.
I should point out at to avoid any confusion that I've been unable to find any examples
of his early work so all the images I'm showing are from 1940 onwards.
And it was in that year that having used his time with the company to develop his skills
and gain professional experience he decided to take a chance and open his own studio.
He immediately began to create pin-ups for the Gerlach-Barklow calendar company. and
these were successful enough to lead to several others in the early 1940s.
And while creating pinups almost on an assembly line basis he also began working for several
popular magazines including Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post. Most of these commissions
were for romantic fiction, and he successfully abandoned his his usual provocative approach
to reflect the narrative character of the stories he depicted.
During World War 2 he was rejected for service on health grounds, so it was business as usual
for Buell with the occasional graphic contribution to the war effort.
Once the war had ended he regularly had his pinups published in the men's magazine Esquire,
and he increasingly appeared in the pages of other magazines with his illustrations
of short stories.
By this point there had been a fairly pronounced change to his stylistic approach.
Where his earlier oil painting technique had been tightly controlled with remarkably smooth
tonal transitions the post-war illustration was noticeably more gestural and impressionistic,
and he also began creating images with watercolour and gouache.
And his pin up work for Esquire and calendars increasingly incorporated developmental pencil
sketches into the final artwork.
In the mid 1960s he retired completely from commercial work, but he did continue to paint
mainly seascapes into old age.
Unfortunately in 1993 he was badly injured in an accident and spent his last years in
a nursing home where he died in 1996 at the age of 86.
Which brings this instalment to a close and I hope you'll be back for more when the next
one is uploaded. See you then.