Max Flashar was born in 1855 in Berlin, and he went on to study art in Weimar, Paris and
the Berlin Art Academy. Beyond that very little is recorded about his life.
He was also a successful artist, and in his case the only real difference between his
art and illustration was that the paintings were in colour and all his illustrations were
printed in monochrome.
The general theme of his illustration work was invariably the humorous behaviour of the
German people, and particularly the social life of the middle classes.
I have no idea if he was a staff artist or freelance contributor, but the only examples
of his illustration I can find are all from the humour magazine Fliegende Blätter.
He first appeared in the magazine in 1883 at which point he would have been 28 years
old.
What he had been doing beforehand isn't recorded, but it's more than possible he had previously
confined himself to a career in art.
Some of his early work in the magazine appears to have been engraved for reproduction but
the vast majority of his output, although monochrome, was tonal, and most likely reproduced
using chromolithography or zincotype. Half tone photolithography didn't arrive until
the later 1890s.
This painted approach made him somewhat unusual in Germany at the time, where traditional
stone lithography or wood engraving was the norm, Although there were a couple of others
also working for Fliegende who were using the same method.
Although all his illustrated work was reproduced in grayscale only, there is clear evidence
that some of his originals at least were actually created in quite restrained colour even though
they were printed as monochrome. This is somewhat puzzling as full colour was quite widely used
in magazines in the early years of the 20th century.
Although comedy was his exclusive domain these halftone wash images were nevertheless quite
representational paintings. Figures, body language and facial expressions were only
slightly exaggerated, and this made the characters he satirised all the more plausible and recognisable
to the magazine's readers.
There was some use of line created with both pen and pencil and he would frequently augment
the shading with pencil too. But ultimateley it was his facility with the use of watercolour
washes which made his work so pleasing to the eye.
He would go on to contribute regularly to Fliegende Blätter for a total of 27 years,
and his association with the magazine ended in 1910. I have no evidence to support the
idea but as he would have only been 55 at the time I think it's quite likely he would
have carried on as an artist.
But whatever he was doing he wouldn't be doing it for long because the only other thing I
can tell you about Max Flashar is that he died in Munich in 1915 at the age of only
60.
Benjamin Rabier has featured in other videos but it's high time I took a more extended
look at his remarkable and highly influential body of work.
He was born in the Western French town of La Roche-sur-Yon in 1864, the son of a carpenter.
But the family moved to Paris when he was 5 years old and other than that I've drawn
a blank about his early life.
When he first went to work it was as a book-keeper, and subsequently as an inspector at Paris's
Les Halles market.
But his drawings were seen by the highly successful cartoon illustrator Caran D'ache, who generously
gave Rabier advice on how to manage a career as an illustrator.
And although he was soon picking up plenty of work from French humour magazines including
Le Rire and L'Assiette au Beure, he continued to hold down his steady job at the market.
In 1898 he collaborated with Fred Isly on an illustrated album called Tintin Lutin.
And in this volume it is easy to see the the stylistic influence his work had on Hergé
in his later wildly popular series of the same name.
Rabier's edition of the classic Les Fables de La Fontaine was published in 1906, and
this book contained a large volume of amusing colour images, many of which were created
as decorative borders around the verses.
In 1910 he finally gave up his job at the market and he spent most of the next 3 years
working on a contemporary adaptation of Comte de Buffon's 18th century Natural History.
The book contained over 900 illustrations and it's no surprise that it had taken so
long to complete.
But the effort was more than justified, and on publication Le Buffon received a warm and
enthusiastic response from the public and the critics.
Over the course of his lifetime, in addition to thousands of illustrations for magazines
and newspapers, he created more than two-hundred-and-fifty titles for children.
And such was his popularity in France his comical animal images were widely merchandised,
and sold in large numbers.
He was of course too old to fight in the First World War but created a series of tales about
the character Flambeau, a literal 'dog of war', which took comic potshots at the German
enemy.
Following the war Rabier continued to create more entertaining books and even had some
of his work recreated as animation.
And in 1923 he designed the image of the laughing cow which is still in use for the French cheese
of that name.
This was also the year in which he first drew an engaging duck by the name of Gédéon.
The popularity of the character and the stories in which he and his animal friends featured
was such that another 15 books about the character were published , the last of them in 1939.
And it was in that year, following a 4 decade long career of astonishing creative productivity
that Benjamin Rabier died at the age of 74.
Despite the beauty of his work and its popularity during his lifetime I've struggled to come
up with any significant information about the life of American illustrator Leslie Ragan.
He was born in Harrison Iowa in 1897 and later studied at the Art Institute of Chicago.
and it's recorded that he also served as a fighter pilot in World War I.
He began his career as an illustrator at some point following the end of the Great War but
the first verified evidence of his work I've found is a series of posters he created for
Chicago's South Shore Rail Company, extolling the scenic virtues of the locations they travelled
to.
The earliest of these is from 1920 and stylistically they were a fairly unusual collision of expressionistic
painterly techniques and the posterisation which had begun a decade earlier with the
designers and artists of the Vienna Secession.
The last of this series appeared in 1928 and it was at this time he also relocated to New
York, where he immediately began creating posters and other marketing material for the
New York Central railway line.
The first of these posters was published in 1929 and initially he carried on in a similar
vein to what he had produced in Chicago, with dramatic views of the company's destinations.
But by now his earlier expressionistic style had undergone a significant transformation
into something altogether more representational and visually dynamic.
And it was during his association with New York Central that he also increasingly turned
his focus away from evocations of the destinations towards images which centred on the sleek
modernist beauty of the means of transport itself.
And it was with these posters that he really made his reputation throughout the late 1930s
and into the 1950s.
Although he had absorbed some influence from Art Deco in terms of the dynamic geometric
underlying composition his painted technique was both tonal and broadly realistic, and
the evidence of his originals for sale reveals that he was equally adept with the use of
oil paint, gouache and watercolour.
Despite the general lack of available information it's recorded that Ragan generally worked
from photographic reference and a vivid imagination to create these posters.
During World War 2 he also produced some propaganda material, and when the war ended he carried
on with rail posters and an increasing level of press advertising, some of which was also
for train travel. But there were also quite a few examples featuring road travel set within
equally dramatic American scenery.
In the 1950s his illustrations were used extensively to promote the Budd transportation company
and these press ads were some of the latest dated work by Ragan I was able to find.
It seems he stopped working commercially around the middle of the decade and yet again I don't
know if he retired or worked as an artist but i do know he died in 1972 in Oregon at
the age of 75.
English humorous illustrator and artist John Gilroy's career was inextricably bound up
with the Irish stout Guinness, and so it's not surprising that almost all of the images
I've used here come from his 3 decade long association with their advertising.
He was was born in 1898 in Whitley Bay, Northumberland, the son of John William Gilroy, a marine landscape
painter.
He attended Durham School of Art but when War broke out in 1914 he joined the army and
fought in Europe.
After the war ended he continued his studies at the Royal College of Art in London, and
following graduation he also worked there as a teacher for a couple of years.
in 1925 he took a job with the S. H. Benson advertising agency, where he worked on various
successful ad campaigns.
And it was there in 1928 that Gilroy created his first poster for Guinness, featuring a
zoo keeper and a cast of animal characters with a totally spurious but comic involvement
with the product.
He would eventually go on to produce more than 100 press advertisements and nearly 50
poster designs for Guinness over 35 years, although he left the agency in the 1940s to
work freelance.
He also maintained a parallel career as a painter and he continued to enjoy equal success
in that capacity throughout his life.
The zoo themed images ran successfully for a remarkably long time but it wasn't the only
subject, and on an ad hoc basis others such as the now iconic toucan paintings were thrown
into the mix, all of which were equally absurd and memorable.
Unlikely as it seems in 1936 there was a planned ad campaign to sell Guinness in Germany, and
Gilroy produced several suggestions for designs which quite openly recognised the dominance
and militaristic buildup of Hitler's national socialist party.
This ill-advised campaign never saw the light of day.
During the Second World War Gilroy not only continued to produce a large volume of military-themed
Guinness posters and press ads, but he also created quite a few typically cheerful domestic
propaganda posters which encouraged British civilians to do their bit for the war effort,
and he brought the same level of imagination to these as his commercial work.
During the 1950s and even into the 1960s his association with Guinness continued, and although
it dominated his commercial output he did also work for other clients, if only on an
occasional basis.
And there was great demand for his portraits among well off citizens and even the Royal
Family.
Because so little value was placed on work such as Gilroy's at the time very few originals
have survived. But as luck would have it fairly recently several unused original painted illustrations
such as the German campaign and this highly amusing series of parodies of the work of
famous artists were discovered.
And it comes as some surprise that although his preparatory work was created first with
pencil and watercolour his originals reveal that the final artwork was rather perversely
painted with oils, combined with thinners to create a more wash-like effect.
As the 1960s came around Gilroy, like so many others tired of commercial illustration, but
he continued to work successfully as a portraitist and he died in London in 1985 at the age of
87.
That wraps up this quartet of heroes and I very much hope I'll see you next time around
with another four.