Spanish illustrator Daniel Vierge
is a considerable distance from being what you might call a household name.
And yet he was undoubtedly one of the most significant
figures in the development of modern illustration.
He was born in Madrid in 1851 and he studied briefly at the art academy there.
He travelled to Paris in 1869 to find work as an illustrator,
and by 1870 his work was appearing regularly in the newspaper Le Monde Illustré.
These early images were almost exclusively melodramatic engravings of current events
from murder and war to festivals and parades.
But he also illustrated Edgar Allen Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue,and this first
foray into fiction demonstrated a pronounced talent for dramatic narrative illustration.
Although he continued to produce journalistic illustration,
in 1876 Michelet's History of France was published as 26 volumes with over 1000 drawings by Vierge.
He also illustrated several novels by the author Victor Hugo around this time,
and by the age of 30 he had become one of France's most successful illustrators.
But Vierge had become increasingly frustrated by the need to have his
drawings converted to engravings for reproduction,
and the loss of visual personality his illustrations suffered in the process.
So he enlisted the technical help of an engraver by the name of Gillot
and after some trial and error they devised the process known as photo-engraving,
which made it possible to create a metal printing plate directly from the original drawn artwork.
The impact of this invention would change how line drawings would be reproduced forever,
and it was with the publication of Vierge's edition of Francisco de Quevedo's Don Pablo
de Segovia in 1882 that the rest of the world became aware of this game-changing development.
But unfortunately as he neared the end of illustrating the book,
and only 30 years old Vierge suffered a stroke which resulted in loss of memory,
speech and most tragically the the use of his right arm due to paralysis.
Consequently the book was published incomplete.
Over a period of two years his speech and memory returned but not the use of his right hand.
But he refused to give in to this disability and he learned to draw with his left.
Although understandably he was nothing like as prolific as he had been he not only managed to
complete the Don Pablo illustrations but produced several more illustrated books.
And most significantly among his left-handed accomplishments
was what would quickly become a definitive edition of the story of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza,
with a series of lively evocative pen and ink drawings.
And a few years later he also worked on the book On the Trail of Don Quixote,
a record of a journey around the locations described in the original book.
But sadly, following his remarkable dedication and return to illustration
Daniel Vierge died in Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1904 at the age of only 53.
In his day Albert Guillaume was widely recognised as one of the leading illustrators
and artists in France, but you'd never know it from his current low profile.
He was born in Paris in 1873, the son of a renowned architect.
And that's about the only biographical information I can find.
Dates of publication and the visual evidence suggest he became active as an illustrator
and painter around 1890. This would have been when he was a mere 17 years old so
it seems certain he was yet another who had not felt the need of a formal art education.
Guillaume was quickly welcomed into the circle of
bohemian poster artists who were the style leaders of the time,
and his earlier work revealed an obvious stylistic debt to the poster pioneer Jules Chéret.
But he was far from alone in this and before long his own visual personality began to emerge.
His work was also to be seen in several of the Parisian magazines
and he had a particularly good working relationship with Le Rire.
Guillaume developed a reputation as a goodnatured satirist and he
tended to avoid politics in favour of taking potshots at the elite of French society.
And as was common at the time he regularly published many of these drawings as a series
of albums. It wasn't unusual for him to publish 2 or 3 in the same year, and the albums
were usually made up of images on a particular theme.
Guillaume was every bit as popular as an artist,
and there was little disparity between his paintings and published work.
Although the paintings were oil on canvas and the illustrations had to comply with
the print processes of the time, his themes and observations were fairly consistent,
and both examined and in varying degrees ridiculed the characters who populated Parisian society.
His monochrome illustrated images were created with pen and ink and they were remarkably light,
precise and expressive.
And his use of colour was by no means an afterthought.
He knew precisely what should be included and excluded in the line work
to be able to add tonal washes to fully round out the characters.
Among his illustrations there are some examples of him working directly onto lithographic stone
but the great majority had obviously been created on paper with pen and wash.
As the 20th century began Guillaume continued to enjoy widespread popularity
and his relationship with Le Rire went from strength to strength.
But this didn't stop him also working for rival magazines such as Le Sourire,
or from producing yet more compelling posters for a diverse group of clients.
During the Great War Le Rire became Le Rire Rouge, and Guillaume continued to supply illustrations,
most of which were comical reflections on the effect of the war on civilian life.
When the war ended his generally goodnatured upbeat humour continued to be in demand,
and throughout the 1920s there was rarely an edition of Le Rire published
without at least one Guillaume illustration.
He retired completely in 1934 and he died at the age of 69 in 1942 ,
and his large body of printed and painted work serves as an absorbing and entertaining record
of a half century of French social history.
Very little is known about British illustrator Gwynedd M. Hudson but luckily there's a reasonable
amount of her work to discuss, even if it comes in the main from a limited number of commissions.
She was born in 1881, more than likely on or near the south east coast,
and when she was 18 she went to study at Brighton School of Art.
In 1911 when she would have already been 30 she published a book about Saint Teresa
in an ink and watercolour style typical of the period,
and the very few examples of her work I've found from this period consist of this fairytale image,
published in the Studio magazine in the same year, a pair of penguin-themed comic postcards,
and a press ad from 1916 for a hand cream, all using the same technique and media.
In 1922 she published the first of her two most significant creative achievements
with her illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It became an immediate
bestseller, and It was so popular it had to be reprinted several times to meet demand.
Obviously this was a book which had been visualised earlier by many others, but
Hudson's depictions of the surreal characters and situations were distinctive and although it was
no easy task to steer around the virtual templates created by Tenniel and others,
Hudson managed to create a more contemporary visualisation of the narrative.
Alongside the many watercolour full page illustrations
there were also a large number of more modernist graphic spot illustrations and
decorative chapter headings printed as line with a rather ill-advised orange, applied at print.
She also created a couple of aesthetically pleasing
understated art deco styled posters in the mid 1920s for the London Underground,
and although it's recorded that she did produce other books in the 1920s
there is unfortunately no visual evidence to be found until the following decade.
The second of her major publishing achievements was
a large format illustrated edition of Peter Pan, published in 1931.
The styling of this book was a radical departure from anything she had published previously.
The images were reproduced in colour which was resolutely flat and featured striking
non-naturalistic palettes. I don't know for sure but close examination of the hit and
miss nature of the colour registration strongly suggests that like the Alice spot illustrations
it was applied over her pen work at printing. Even so in this case it was done very imaginatively
And it was the heavily designed art deco stylistic feel of the book and its incorporation of artfully
presented images and hand lettering which made it such a remarkably distinctive piece of work.
I don't know if this was her last published work but the only other information I can offer
is that Gwynedd Hudson died in 1935 at the age of only 54.
I'm aware that for many American viewers Rube Goldberg isn't unsung at all,
but his work is nothing like as well known on this side of the Atlantic,
and even in the USA there are probably younger viewers who are unaware of his existence.
He was born in San Francisco in 1883 and as
a child exhibited a marked predisposition for drawing.
But his father pressured him to pursue a career in engineering,
and in 1904 he emerged from the University of California
with a degree and was promptly hired by the San Francisco Water and Sewers Department.
Predictably he hated it, and after six months he left to become a cartoonist
with the San Francisco Chronicle.
The following year, he moved to the San Francisco Bulletin, and in 1907
he headed for New York to work as a cartoonist at the New York Evening Mail.
All his work for the Mail was widely syndicated, which got his work seen by a massive audience,
and by 1915 he was earning $25,000 a year. That's about $650,000
now and I sincerely hope he rubbed his father's nose in that.
In 1915 William Randolph Heart's empire tried to recruit him and offered him double
his current salary, but the Mail thought highly enough of him to match the offer.
In 1916, Goldberg apparently created a series of short animated films, which I haven't been able to
track down. But I did find this example from 1924, which shows he was a more than capable animator.
He was immensely prolific and frequently produced several cartoon series at the same time,
among them the highly successful long running Boob McNutt .
He had experienced early popular success with his series Foolish Questions,
and this simple but enduring concept was printed in both monochrome and colour
throughout America between 1909 and 1934.
It was popular enough to spawn a game and even a stage musical.
He had even greater success with his series The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts,
which initially had a two year run in Collier's Weekly from 1929 to 1931.
This series featured lunatic inventions and combinations of unlikely devices,
whose purpose was to make the simplest tasks ludicrously complex.
British illustrator William Heath Robinson had found great success with similar absurd devices
at least 2 decades previously, and what we call a
Heath Robinson device Americans refer to as a Rube Goldberg contraption .
And although its his inventions for which he has continued to be remembered
there were yet more strips throughout the 1930s and 1940s .
In 1938, Goldberg started working as the editorial cartoonist for the New York Sun, and . With
this work he changed his style and began incorporating textured pencil or charcoal shading.
He moved to the New York Journal-American in 1949 and worked there until his retirement in 1963.
And Rube Goldberg died in 1970 at the age of 87.
And with that it's goodbye for now and I hope to see you soon with more.