Georges Goursat was born in 1863 into an affluent family in Périgueux, in the Southwest of France.
His father died when Georges was 21 and the
wealth he inherited meant he had no need to earn a living.
But in In 1888 he self-published three albums of caricatures,
and that's when he began using the alias 'Sem'.
In 1890 he settled in Bordeaux, but during this period he travelled regularly to Paris
and began having his work published in magazines and occasionally as posters.
After a brief spell in Marseille he relocated to Paris in 1900,
and he remained there for the rest of his life.
A couple of months after his arrival he published an album of drawings with a horse racing theme
titled Le Turf, and it was an instant popular success among prominent Parisian socialites,
including those he actually made fun of in the images.
In October of the same year, he published another titled,
Paris-Trouville, and it was just as successful as the first.
By now something of a celebrity himself he created another 9 volumes up to 1913,
and as well as his ongoing appearances in Paris's humour magazines he also became a
popular choice to create posters, quite a few of them for alcohol.
Goursat was already 50 years old when the war began, and therefore not expected
to fight. But he played his part as a war correspondent for Le Journal.
he produced two albums of War sketches in a style not used for his other work.
And he also created posters to promote the sale of war bonds.
Following the end of the war Goursat carried on as before and the exuberant frivolity of
what in France was known as les Années Folles gave him plenty of material for his goodnatured
satires. Where some of his contemporaries had struggled to address the immense shift
in social behaviour following the war Goursat straddled the two eras with great success.
His collections of drawings continued to sell in large numbers, and In 1927 he published
the album White Bottoms, which focussed on the dance craze known as the black bottom sweeping
the Parisian cabarets and jazz clubs. This was a particularly amusing visual account of the
French elite's frequently less than accomplished attempts to master the dance moves introduced by
the black American performers who were taking Europe by storm with the energy of their music.
But this collection would be among his last projects and following a
heart attack, Georges Goursat died in Paris in 1934 at the age of 71.
Maxwell Armfield was born into a quaker family in the county of Hampshire in England in 1881.
In 1897 at only 16 years old he began to study at Birmingham School of Art.
Although he had not been comfortable with the formal teaching there in 1902, he moved to Paris
to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and in 1904 he exhibited at the Paris Salon.
And it seems that at this time and for the next few
years illustration wasn't part of his ambitions.
But in 1909 he married the writer Constance Smedley,
and it was at this point that Armfield's career as an illustrator began.
He collaborated with his wife on The Flower Book, which was published in 1910.
She wrote the text and he provided a series of
naturalistic light watercolour depictions of the various species of flora featured.
This appears to have been something of a decisive year for Armfield's career because it was also in
1910 that his beautifully illustrated edition of the fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
was published. This was a lavishly produced gift book featuring many full page delicate
line and wash illustrations, and it was a well deserved critical and popular success.
This volume of illustration was a significant achievement in itself,
but as if making up for lost time he also published a similarly exquisite series of
watercolours for the French medieval romantic tale of Auccasin and Nicolette. And Armfield's
illustrations were rightly considered to have played a major part in this edition's popularity.
In 1912 he illustrated Cambridge and its History, with yet more watercolours
of idyllic views of the historic architecture and agreeable scenery to be found in the city,
and up to this point Armfield appeared to be defined as an illustrator by this type of work.
But In 1914 he published a book of his own poems,
illustrated with a rather unexpected series of modernist line and flat colour illustrations.
And following this demonstration of graphic versatility in 1915 he also created a pair
of stylish and equally modernist posters for the London Underground.
It was also in that year that his collaboration
with the writer Vernon Lee titled The Ballet of the Nations was published.
This was a clearly pacifist piece of satirical work using ancient Greek motifs to reflect on
the evils of war, a subject firmly embedded in Armfield's quaker faith. But the fiercely
patriotic mood which prevailed in wartime England was at odds with his point of view,
and a hostile reaction to the book and his stance led to the Armfields leaving Britain for the USA.
The couple spent the next 7 years travelling around various American states while he drew
and painted along the way. Many of these images were later published as a book,
but its limited appeal was never going to make it a popular volume.
They returned to England in 1922, and in that year they published another collaboration,
the Armfields Animal Book ,with images leaning heavily towards the kind of
folk art he had become fascinated by while resident in new Mexico..
In the later 20s and into the 1930 evidence of his illustration and art become rather
thin on the ground but there is evidence that he worked successfully as a textile designer,
combining folk art and art deco elements in his designs.
Constance Smedley died in 1941 at the age of 65. But Maxwell Armfield
still had some way to go and didn't die until 1972, when he was 91 years old.
British children's illustrator Ernest Aris must be one of the most poorly
remembered of his generation, and I can't imagine why this should be.
He was born in London in 1882. But in his youth the family moved to Bradford
in West Yorkshire and he subsequently studied at the city's art school.
Following this he returned to London to attend the Royal College of Art,
and then began a career as an artist, with which he enjoyed reasonable success.
The earliest examples of illustration work I've found date from 1903 and are in the form
of postcards, some of which were intended to be humorous and others which were scenic in nature.
But it isn't until 1909 that book illustration by Aris begins to appear and the evidence
clearly shows that in the intervening years his technique had improved dramatically.
Although on occasion he produced line only monochromes,
the great majority of his output was created and printed in full colour.
Virtually all his illustrations were of endearing anthropomorphised animal characters, created with
extremely accomplished and expressive pen line and tonal watercolour washes.
Not only was Aris a talented illustrator,
but he wrote many of the stories too, and his books sold in large numbers,
delighting young children with the antics of his repertory company of woodland creatures.
But although children's book work undoubtedly constituted the backbone
of his career in 1915 he also created a series of very attractive wildlife
themed watercolours which were used as posters by London Transport.
During the years of the Great war he was approached by Beatrix Potter's
publisher to ask if he would take over the illustration of her books as her eyesight
was by this point rapidly deteriorating. but although he would have made an ideal
replacement the proposal ultimately came to nothing.
In 1917 Aris published his own book The Treasure Seekers, which featured a character by the name of
Peter Rabbit, and consequently various lawsuits were issued by Potter's legal representatives.
For reasons that I can't work out this unresolved dispute led to Aris
changing publishers, and adopting the pseudonyms Robin A. Hood and Dan Crow.
But this didn't last long and not many years later he returned to using his
own name and the immense volume of books he created in the 1920s and
30s clearly indicates his reputation hadn't suffered any lasting damage.
In 1934, he designed a range of animal characters for Cadbury's Cocoa. These metal cast figurines
were known as the Cococubs and they were very popular and avidly collected by British children.
And in the mid 1930s in addition to his own books he became one of the select group of illustrators
to create illustrations for books written by Britain's most popular author Enid Blyton.
His popularity as both author and illustrator continued throughout
the second world war and the years which followed, and in 1947 he illustrated the
first in a highly successful series, known as Tasseltip Tales, written by Dorothy Richards.
In later years he also began producing illustrations for
children's comics and magazines such as this example from 1955,
Ernest Aris died in London in 1963 when he was 81 years old,
and has been greatly neglected ever since.
Cardwell Higgins was Born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1902, and enrolled at the National
Academy of Design at 18. But he found their teaching too formal and moved not long after
to the more progressive Art Students League. After graduation Higgins started work at a New
York engraving firm, but In the later 1920s, he moved out to California, and worked alongside
luminaries including Alberto Vargas and Henry Clive, as an illustrator for Paramount Pictures.
There his creations included stylised portraits of
various movie stars for the film company's publicity material, press ads and posters.
After developing his technique with Paramount he returned to New York in the early 1930s,
where he began the most productive period of his career as a freelance illustrator.
He created many nude and provocatively half-dressed pin-up covers for several
of the racier pulp magazines of the time, and he evidently enjoyed producing these brazenly
erotic females to entice the male readers into discovering the salacious stories within.
But this wasn't his only arena, and he was simultaneously producing other illustrations and
advertising work including publicity for the New York World's Fair of 1939, and for Cadillac cars.
The advertising campaign he created for Coney Island's Palisades Park made great use his prowess
as a pin-up artist with a cheerful bathing beauty character who featured in all their promotion.
And alongside his ongoing advertising and pulp illustration there is this
single piece of visual evidence that he also worked in comic books.
When America entered World War 2, he taught camouflage design for
the army, and also illustrated this determinedly upbeat patriotic poster
urging American women to knit a sweater for a soldier.
After the war, Higgins was less prolific, and he seems to have been more focussed
on illustrating magazine fiction mostly of a fairly lurid nature.
But he also spent some time teaching art and worked sporadically as a freelance
designer and art director including design work for Eastern Airlines.
In the later 1960s he retired from commercial activity, although in the 70s he recreated some of
his earlier monochrome work in a very attractive blend of neoclassical and art deco styling.
And Cardwell Higgins died in 1983 at the age of 81.
So that's it for now and I hope I'll see you when the next one is ready to go.
Living in Hollywood, Florida, he struck up a close friendship with noted art historian
and collector Charles Martignette, and In 1979 the two collaborated to create a
limited edition series of lithographs based upon some of Higgins’ earliest work–pen & ink art deco
illustrations, showing a clear influence f Aubrey Beardsley,abd Harry Clarke, ’
The wealth inherited from his father at the age of 21allowed him to sustain a gilded youth.
In 1888 he self published in Périgueux his first three albums
of caricatures, signing some as "SEM", From 1890 to 1898, he settled for a few
years in Bordeaux. During this period, he published more albums and his first press
caricatures in "Tourny Noel", "Perigueux Illustrè" et "L'entr'acte Perigourdin". His style matured,
becoming both simpler and more precise. From 1898 to 1900, he lived in
Marseille. During this stay, he met Jean Lorrain who convinced him to live in Paris.