French illustrator Georges Leonnec was born in Brittany in 1881with more than his fair
share of artistic DNA.
His father was Paul Leonnec, a successful caricaturist and cartoon illustrator in the
second half of the 19th century. So as he grew up
Georges was able to learn the basics of comic illustration first hand, and bypass any need
for formal art education.
Although I can't find any visual evidence of his early work it's been asserted that
by the age of 18 he was selling drawings to Parisian
newspapers and magazines.
But from 1907 onward there are examples of his cover and page illustrations for the racy
lifestyle magazine La Vie Parisienne, and this would prove to be the beginning of his
longest and most profitable professional relationship.
He joined the army in the World War 1 but was lucky enough to never be involved in the
fighting. And once he resumed civilian status he set up a home and studio in the Montparnasse
district in Paris.
He continued his good working relationship with La Vie Parisienne and also extended his
range of clients to several of La Vie's rivals, including La Baionette and Le Sourire.
In the 1920s his popularity with all the magazines grew throughout the decade, and the comedic
erotic images he created for them were the very embodiment of the carefree hedonistic
Parisian lifestyle the magazines represented and reflected.
Virtually all his magazine work was published as duotone line and wash, and he maximised
the illustrations' visual appeal with a clear understanding of the aesthetic possibilities
and limitations of two colour printing.
But occasionally Leonnec was able to use full colour in his work, such as his pinup postcards,
which sold in healthy numbers.
In the later 1920s he started getting noticed by advertising agencies who rightly thought
his cheeky goodnatured humour was ideal for selling their products
His long running campaign for Byrrh apéritif wine was easily the most successful and
enduring of his campaigns and this extensive series of agreeable amusing monochrome
line and wash illustrations appeared as press ads throughout the French media for several
years.
There was also a poster campaign for the drink, another of the relatively infrequent
occasions he got to work in full colour.
In the 1930s his pace of work slowed and he spent increasing amounts of time travelling
with his family around Europe. But he didn't stop work altogether and as well as working
on a less frequent basis for his existing clients he found time to illustrate the ancient
Roman erotic story Daphnis and Chloé.
Unfortunately in 1935 Leonnec was diagnosed with cancer, and although he knew his days
were numbered he carried on working right up to the end of his life in 1940 at the age
of only 59.
In addition to being a successful cartoonist Josef Mauder was also a painter, writer, sculptor
and briefly a professional footballer.
He was born in Munich in Germany in 1884 and he went on to attend the Royal Arts and Crafts
School in the city.
In 1904 at the age of only 20 he began his career as an illustrator of children's books
and he quickly had success with the charming colourful work he created.
In the same year he began his football career as captain of the reserve team of Bayern Munich.
But a year later in 1905 he was also made art editor of Meggendorfer Blatter magazine
and he couldn't continue to do both, and sustain his own illustration career. Something had
to give and reluctant it he gave up any footballing ambitions.
But he still had plenty to keep him occupied as an editor and illustrator
In the years of the Great War the children's work was put on hold and he concentrated on
support for the Kaiser's belligerence. Strangely, his own illustrations in the magazine continued
to be mostly harmless fun although most of the images he commissioned were highly critical
of the British and their allies.
Once the war was lost he went back to children's work, and created more endearing and frequently
sentimental picture books, all of which sold well in Germany.
At this time his children's work was tightly controlled with heavy black line work and
generally flat colour.
His adult work on the other hand had a more spontaneous looking style with a fine line
and loose application of colour in washes and crayon. But before long the children's
work would emulate this looser approach.
In 1928 he left Meggendorfer Blätter to work for their rival Fliegende Blätter, and by
the time Hitler's National Socialist Party took over in 1933 the magazine had been co-opted
as a mouthpiece for Nazi ideology and the antisemitism that was at the heart of it.
And Mauder's previously good natured cartoons became increasingly vitriolic and hostile
to the allies and their supposed Jewish puppetmasters.
Despite these attacks Mauder didn't suffer any particularly adverse consequences when
the war was over.
He continued to work successfully as a children's illustrator with his new loose style on books
such as With the Dwarfs in 1948. This series of amusing gestural images and others he created
in the postwar period were very much ahead of their time in the world of picture books.
And for the adults he steered well clear of politics and limited his scope to football
and general sporting themes. Josef Mauder eventually retired in the mid
1950s and he died in 1969 at the age of 85.
American George Carlson was one of the most admired and accomplished humorous illustrators
in the first half of the 20th century and yet now he's all but forgotten.
He was born in New York in 1887, and when old enough he studied at various art schools
in the city.
Unfortunately there followed a period of more than a decade without any recorded activity
until 1913 when his comic illustrations began to appear in the humour magazine Life.
And soon after he also started working for Judge with the detailed narrative series The
Wonderful Garden that Jack Owned
In that same year his first illustrated book was published. This was the story of Rip Van
Winkle and Carlson created a series of bold line illustrations which were overprinted
with a rather pointless red.
But his most significant and enduring professional relationship began when he was given his first
commission by the children's magazine series which was generically known as John Martin's
Book.
His first illustrations for this publication were also created in 1913, and he would feature
in almost every issue up to 1933.
In that time he produced countless inventive spot illustrations, puzzle pages and over
50 covers.
In 1917 The Magic Stone by Elizabeth Blanche Wade was published featuring a handful of
particularly impressive pen and watercolour full page fantasy illustrations.
These highly rendered atmospheric mages revealed another previously unseen facet of his talent
which sadly he never returned to.
By 1920 Carlson's position as one of America's top cartoon illustrators was assured, and
throughout the following decade he demonstrated his visual diversity on a colossal amount
of magazine covers and page illustrations, book illustration and advertising work.
And this was all in addition to his virtually full time contract with John Martin's book.
Carlson was already 55 years old and had been working for three decades before he began
drawing comic strips in 1942.
But he made up for last time with an avalanche of work for strips such as the Pie Faced Prince
and The Brass Buttoned Baron. Carlson created the line illustration for the strips, which
then had the various spot colours added at print. How much control he did or didn't have
of this process isn't recorded.
He had an agreeably madcap style in his comic book work and his approach to layout and sequencing
have since been adopted and adapted by later comic artists.
He was so successful in this aspect of his career he sold vast numbers of his series
of how to draw books to young hopefuls hoping to follow in his footsteps.
In the 30s the John Martin series ended but there was no shortage of other work and he
continued to have success with his own books and comics.
In 1939 he became one in a series of 7 different illustrators to work on Howard Garis's Uncle
Wiggily stories, and he produced a total of 8 books in both line and colour. And enjoyable
as they were it's rather surprising that with his own level of successful character design
he would be happy to re-create what others had done before
Carlson's last book was Jokes and Riddles in 1959, and he died 3 years later in 1962
at the age of 75, leaving behind an astonishing collection of work.
I recently came across a couple of illustrations by Argentinian illustrator Juan Carlos Huergo
and immediately searched for more.
I found out they were part of a remarkable series of press advertisements for the cigarette
brand 43.
I also found out he was born in Paris in 1889 but his family returned to Argentina when
he was a year old. He later returned to Paris to study art before settling in Buenos Aires.
He was also a popular if fairly indifferent painter of Argentinian history.
And that's it for a biography.
So this segment is entirely based in that one series of cigarette ads.
The illustrations were created between 1917 and 1920 and the most striking thing among
many about the campaign is the persistence and diverse nature of Huergo's imagination.
Throughout the series there were identifiable themes being used and to an extent they can
be annexed into different subcategories.
But even even among those no two were quite the same.
Not all the illustrations are intended to be humorous, and on occasion he opted for
a more formal Art Deco style but almost all have a decidedly surreal quality.
Some of the illustrations seem to have been based on pantomime or fairy tale themes and
although I'm sure they would have resonated with the Argentinian public in 1920 they are
certainly outside my sphere of cultural reference.
Others were more obvious comical evocations of Argentinian characters of the period, usually
but not invariably male.
There were national and historical themes too. There was a particularly attractive group
of oriental subjects rendered in an oriental style, and another which used imagery and
subjects from the history of the middle east.
Despite the astonishing range of his images there were one or two commonalities of approach,
particularly in his choice of media.
All were initially created as pen and ink drawings, and all were rendered in watercolour
and gouache. But the broad range of techniques used varies
from Arthur Rackham style complexity through to flatter more graphic art deco application.
At the time it was quite common for posters in Europe to not have any text other than
the brand name.
But it was far from usual practice in press advertising, which normally would feature
at least a paragraph about whatever was being sold and why you should buy it.
Virtually all Huergo's ads only feature the brand identity 43, and even that is frequently
concealed within the image and this absence only reinforces the visual appeal of Huergo's
images.
Another distinctive feature of the ads is that there is more often than not absolutely
no connection between the illustration and the cigarette. Sometimes the pack appears
and is used as an oversized prop, or the main character just happens to be smoking a cigarette,
whether adult or child or occasionally animal.
This has to be one of the most creative press ad campaigns of all time, and I'm eternally
grateful to whoever put these images on the internet.
Juan Carlos Heurgo died in Buenos Aires in 1962, more than 40 years after this series
of illustrations. There must be more by him out there somewhere.
And That's it for this video and the next should be along in a couple of weeks.
So goodbye until then.