Edmund Joseph Sullivan was born in London in 1869, the son of a successful Victorian
painter.
But rather than tread the same path as his father he gravitated in his teens towards
the graphic arts and illustration, rather than oil painting.
At the age of only 19 he got a job working for the Daily Graphic magazine, producing
illustrations for news stories.
And after five years there he moved to thePall Mall Magazine in 1893, where he also began
illustrating fiction, and that's where he really began to find his way.
In 1895 he illustrated a collection of English verse, which led rapidly to more commissions
for book work.
One of the earliest and certainly one of the most successful of these was Lavengro, written
by George Borrow and published in 1896.
Sullivan was already an astonishingly accomplished and expressive pen and ink illustrator, and
at this point all his work was monochrome. But given the dynamic and dramatic qualities
of his line work the absence of colour mattered little.
From this point on it's impossible to keep up with the torrent of illustrations Sullivan
created so I'll just pick out some of the highlights.
In 1898 his illustrated edition of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus was published, and
it featured a large number of suitably dark and frequently grotesque images throughout.
And in this book the personification of death made an early appearance and would become
almost compulsory in anything Sullivan subsequently embarked on.
And this fondness for mournful and sinister imagery made him the perfect choice to illustrate
the poems of Tennyson in 1900.
He illustrated several stories by H. G. Wells, including A Modern Utopia in 1905.
And in 1910 he created a series of particularly gruesome images for Thomas Carlyle's brutal
account of The French Revolution.
On a lighter note he also illustrated an edition of Shakespeare's comedies published in 1911.
His illustrations for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam were published in 1913 and the book
was reprinted numerous times.
This volume in particular provided Sullivan with ample opportunity to give a starring
role to what was evidently his favourite character.
Among them was this illustration, which was shamelessly stolen for a Grateful Dead poster
in 1966.
As I'm sure you've noticed all his work up to this point had been monochrome but in 1914
Lavengro was published again, and this time it included a dozen watercolour full page
illustrations alongside the monochromes.
This wasn't his only foray into colour but there weren't that many others and it was
line illustration which continued to remain at the heart of his popularity.
He used his skills for scathing and particularly nightmarish satire in 1916 in a collection
of wartime images called the Kaiser's Garland, which attacked Prussian militarism and Kaiser
Wilhelm's belligerence.
Once again the personification Death put in several appropriate appearances.
Strangely,In the years following the war all evidence of Sullivan's work disappears and
the only other book which can be verified is Towards the Light which was published in
1932.
A year later Sullivan died at the age of only 64.
Werner Hahmann was born in 1883 in Chemnitz in Germany and having shown early talent for
all things visual he went on to study architecture and art in Dresden, Munich and Paris.
Consequently it was 1910, when he was already 27 that he began a career as a painter and
printmaker.
He had some success with his etchings in particular but in 1914 he also started to submit satirical
drawings to the magazine Kladderadatsch.
Very quickly he became a frequent and regular contributor.
The first world war had just begun, and his drawings during the conflict, just like those
of his colleagues at the magazine were blindly patriotic and scathing about the enemies of
the Kaiser.
Once the war was over the tone of Hahmann's work predictably became less bombastic but
continued to criticise the allied nations for their supposedly rough treatment of the
defeated Germans.
Like those of most of his contemporaries Hahmann's magazine illustrations were created directly
onto lithographic stone with brush and wax crayon and if colour was used it was applied
through a series of usually flat colour print runs.
All his illustrations displayed clinical precision and when combined with the particularly well
chosen spot colours they all had immense graphic clarity.
As early as 1930 his work began to feature antisemitic sentiments, which were already
widespread throughout Germany.
And when the Nazis came to power in 1933 Hahmann and his colleagues sang their praises for
the Fuhrer's mission and appeared to be trying to outdo each other in terms of just how antisemitic
they could be.
This and the hostility to the other countries of Europe continued throughout the decade
and when the war began in 1939 it grew ever more intense and didn't let up until Kladderadatsch
collapsed in 1944.
And at that point all trace of Hahmann disappears
German Wikipedia makes no mention of his antisemitism or staunch support for Fascism, and it also
doesn't give any clues about what he did in later life.
There are widely differing assertions about how much later life he had.
Some sources assert it was 1952 and others 1977 when he died.
The latter seems to have the most support but if it was 1952 that would explain why
there was no more work after the war.
Of the many forward looking graphic artists working in Paris in the 1920s and 30s Charles
Loupot is undoubtedly one of the least appreciated.
He was born in Nice on the French Riviera in 1892 but in 1905 the family relocated to
Lausanne in Switzerland.
At the age of 18 he returned to France to study at the school of fine art in Lyon.
As soon as he had graduated the Great War broke out, and he enlisted in the French army.
Not much later he was wounded in battle and sent home to Switzerland to recover.
So in 1917 at the age of 25 he began working as an illustrator and designer for a number
of Swiss print and publishing companies.
Most of this was poster work for fashion houses, and he created some remarkably atmospheric
gestural images which were both expressionistic and modernist.
In 1923 he returned to France, and although he had more fashion work published in La Gazette
du Bon by now he was first and foremost a poster artist.
The printers Devambez were particularly keen to exploit his talent for eye-catching stylish
posters and Loupot happily obliged with diverse and highly imaginative illustrations for a
wide range of high profile clients from different areas of commerce and industry.
His association with Devambez turned out to be shorter than expected when only a couple
of years later a new company Les Belles Affiches was established and Loupot was hired as their
creative director.
Soon after his appointment the wine company Étienne Nicolas approached him to modernise
their brand, and he responded with a suitably contemporary and visually distinctive campaign.
By this point his reputation was well established and attracting yet more advertising work for
any number of prestigious clients.
In terms of both his stylistic approach and his use of media he was particularly eclectic.
And his figure work and visualisation of pictorial elements in general explored varying levels
of abstraction and representation. There's no definitive information on what
paint he used but the best guess is gouache or tempera.
It was usually but not always applied opaque and he combined flat and tonal elements, using
dry brush techniques and probably airbrush.
But whatever his methods and media the results were never less than compelling and aesthetically
considered.
In 1931 he began a collaboration with A. M. Cassandre's graphic studio but after 4 years
they went their separate ways again.
In 1935 he was commissioned by the aperitif company St-Raphaël and once again he demonstrated
his ability to re-invent corporate images and boost sakes.
The relationship was so successful it endured for decades and only ended when Loupot died.
But all his work was interrupted in 1940 when France was occupied by German forces, and
he retreated to the countryside and kept his head down until the allies had driven the
germans out.
Once the war was over it took him a few years to rebuild his reputation and client base
but by 1950 he had established his own advertising agency in Paris.
And throughout the following decade he continued to enjoy great commercial and creative success.
But unfortunately Loupot became ill in the later 1950s and he reluctantly retired.
Not much later in 1962 he died at the age of 70.
I'm not sure how I managed to leave it this long before including British cartoonist and
illustrator Leslie Illingworth, given how much his work meant to me as I grew up.
He was born in Barry in Wales in 1902 and in his teens he found work at the Western
Mail newspaper.
In 1921 and still only 18 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London.
A few months later he was offered the job of chief cartoonist at the Western Mail, and
he accepted the offer on condition he could send his work from London.
Surprisingly they agreed to this and he engaged an agent in London who quickly found him commissions
on top of his official job with the Mail.
In 1927 he had his first illustration for Punch magazine published.
But instead of building on his growing reputation he impulsively left for the USA, followed
by stays in Berlin and finally Paris.
His absence seems to have not done him any professional harm and on his return to Britain
almost 4 years later Illingworth picked up where he had left off with all his former
clients.
He had begun his career as a monochrome illustrator, using pen, brush and black ink with great
control.
He used selective areas of hatching to create solidity and lighting effects, but he instinctively
knew when to leave well alone and it was never overdone.
When it came to colour he was no less expressive.
A lot of his illustrations for Punch including cover art were printed in full colour, and
although he still used an ink line as the basis of the work, he skilfully applied the
washes of watercolour to solidify and add detail to both his almost representational
figures and highly plausible closely observed scene setting.
In 1939 he took over the prestigious role of chief political cartoonist at the Daily
Mail newspaper.
And throughout the Second World War he created 4 black and white cartoons a week which reflected
on the conflict.
But he was also continuing to create a lot of work for the pages of Punch, in colour
and in monochrome.
When the war ended Illingworth continued to hold down two supposedly full time very well
paid jobs at the Daily Mail and Punch, and still managed to find time to take commissions
from other magazines.
These were used regularly to illustrate lighthearted serialised fiction throughout the 50s and
60s.
Meanwhile his newspaper work made visually eloquent commentary on more serious global
matters.
After a half century of remarkable productivity Leslie Illingworth finally retired in 1969.
And he died a decade later in 1979, after suffering a stroke at the age of 77.
That's it for now and as ever I hope I'll see you next time.