The Austrian painter, graphic artist and illustrator Maximilian Liebenwein
was born in Vienna in 1869.
And although there is both biographical and visual evidence to be found
it's a virtual impossibility to match the two elements with any accuracy.
His biography reveals nothing about his illustration career, and most of
the visual examples I've found are undated and don't credit where they were published.
So I'll do my best to make some sense of it but hope the pictures are a good enough distraction.
His family were prosperous and although his merchant father disapproved of his determination
to be an artist Maximilian nevertheless enrolled at the city's Academy of Fine Arts in 1887.
He left in 1891and spent the following year in the army, but he subsequently continued
with his art education at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe followed by yet more in Munich,
and he didn't stop until 1897 by which time he was already 28.
But even during his protracted studies he was already working as both an artist and
illustrator and had been published in Jugend magazine.
He also contributed to the Bosnian magazine Nada,
from its founding in 1895 until its last issue in 1903.
In 1899 he established his residence and studio in the castle overlooking the medieval town of
Burghausen which he shared with his friend, the now extremely obscure Paul Horst-Schulze.
Around this time his work appeared regularly in the arts magazine Ver Sacrum,
which was the official magazine of the Vienna Secession between 1898 and 1903.
And the medievalist images he created were typical of his output,
and were largely informed by the architecture and scenery of Burghausen.
Like most illustrators in Europe at this time Liebenwein worked regularly in monochrome,
but it seems he had more opportunities than others to create painted colour illustration,
most frequently using tempera paint.
Still living in Burghausen Castle, he married in 1900 and his first son was born two years later.
In the first decade of the 20th century he worked prolifically
and in addition to his book and magazine illustration he also created a number of posters.
Among other commissions there were severaj fairy stories and in 1907
he illustrated the book The Blue Coach written by Adolf Holst.
Liebenwein returned to Vienna in 1908 and ran a painting school there until 1913,
although he still spent summers in Burghausen Castle, and continued to paint and illustrate.
Despite being 45 years old Liebenwein volunteered for military service in the Great War
and while he fought on the Eastern front his wife unfortunately died of cancer in 1916.
Only a year later he suffered a stroke, and left the army in 1918.
Following the war Liebenwein moved back to Burghausen, and in addition
to his illustrations of medieval fantasy and mythology he also produced religious book work.
The Lives of the Saints featuring colour lithographs in 1920 was particularly well
recieved, as was another about St Francis of Assissi published not long after.
He also enjoyed success with his illustrated edition of the children's
book Spiegel das Kätzchen by Gottfried Heller, which was published in 1922.
But In 1926 he suffered another stroke,
and this one was fatal. And Liebenwein died in Burghausen at the age of only 57.
British children's illustrator Harold Cecil Earnshaw was born in 1886 in Woodford, Essex,
the sixth of 9 children.
At the age of 18 he enrolled at St. Martin's School of Art in London,
and it was there that he met his future wife, the children's illustrator
Mabel Lucie Attwell, who will be featured in a future instalment of the series.
His earliest work includes illustrations for school
stories like The Pretenders by Meredith Fletcher
and The Willoughby Captains by Talbot Baines Reed, both in 1907when he was still a student.
The couple graduated and married in 1908 and both set about their
careers as illustrators from their flat in south London.
Earnshaw quickly found work creating illustration
for story and educational books for various British publishing houses.
And with his wife's own increeasing success they moved to a much more spacious house in Surrey.
Alongside his book work Earnshaw also regularly provided humorous illustrations for a number
of popular magazines such as The Pall Mall, The Graphic and The Bystander.
He enlisted in the army when World War I began and tragically he lost his right arm
and suffered other longterm injuries in a bomb explosion at the battle of the Somme in 1917.
But with remarkable determination he taught himself how to draw,
paint and write with his left hand, and actually managed to continue his career as an illustrator.
Only months after losing his arm The Graphic published a series of drawings
from his sketchbook, chronicling his experiences in a war hospital.
Back in civilian life, he continued to contribute cartoons, comic strips and
illustrations to a wide range of magazines and books for both grown-ups and children,
all of it goodnatured and visually pleasing. For the best part of 2 decades his output
continued undiminished and his illustrations were particularly popular with the British public.
Between 1928 and 1931 Earnshaw had a comic strip in The Daily Mirror called The Pater,
and in addition to his British commissions he also had worked
published in the American humour magazine Life.
But despite his astonishing fortuitude and resilience Harold Earnshaw never fully
recovered from his wartime injuries, and he died in London in 1937, at the age of only 51.
French illustrator Guy Arnoux was born in 1886 in Paris And although
he illustrated around 80 books, among other achievements he is now largely forgotten.
There is very little biographical information about him and nothing
at all about his early life or education,
and it isn't until 1910 when he was 24 years old that the first evidence of his work appears.
At this stage he was producing fashion illustrations for La Gazette du Bon Ton
which conformed to the expected graphic styling of the time,
and were reproduced in colour with pochoir stencils.
But soon enough he began expressing himself with greater individuuality
I can't find a record of whether he fought in the Great War but his
work appeared regularly in magazines such as La Baionnette at this time,
and he used his graphic talent to create patriotic images for other magazines and books.
He illustrated the book The French Soldier in War in 1917 as a patriotic wartime publication. And
the following year he had two more similar works published -The French, and The French Sailors.
These images set the template for a lot of his work published in subsequent years,
which almost invariably had military or naval themes.
But despite his popularty in this area there was other work too.
Some of his commissions were more lighthearted and on occasion even comic,
and he even created some illustration for children's publishing.
And his fame even spread beyond France in the 1920s when his work appeared in
American magazines such as Vanity Fair.
In all his illustration he used a loose but expressive line of fairly even weight,
which gave his images a particularly spontaneous appeal.
This was further enhanced when he used colour, which was almosrt invariably
watercolour for lithographic printing or applied with the pochoir stencil process.
In the 1930s he also created some advertising work but it continued
to be books such as 1931's The Vitriol of the Moon by Henri Beraud which dominated his output.
And his edition of The Works of François Villon was published to great acclaim in 1935.
Despite the disruption caused by the second world war and Gemany's occupation of France
he continued to work up to 1951, which was the year Arnoux died at the age of 65.
American illustrator Whitney Darrow Jr. was born into a wealthy family in New Jersey in 1909.
His original ambition was to be a writer and he graduated with a degree from the prestigious
Princeton university before changing his mind and deciding that he’d be happier as a cartoonist.
So he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York and although only in his early 20s
he was selling cartoons to various humorous magazines.
As a 24 year old in 1933, he sold his first cartoon to The New Yorker,
and that of course was a breakthrough moment for his reputation.
His relationship with the New Yorker would last for half a century,
during which time the magazine printed more than 1500 of his cartoons.
And his newfound prestige and popularity as a visual humourist
quickly drew the attention of other clients from publishing and advertising.
Stylistically Darrow was one of the great scribbly illustrators, and all his work looked completely
spontaneous, with gestural brush and crayon line work and bright washes of transparent colour
And all his characters and their poses were carefully
observed even if exaggerated for comic effect.
During his career Darrows cartoon work was popuklar enough to justify
four seperate collections, starrting with You're Sitting on My Eyelashes in 1943.
The volume of advertising campaigns he created work for was unprecedented,
as clients queued up to associate their products and services with his benign magic and this
commercial work constituted a particulary large part of his income in the 1950 and 60s
Whether in books or advertising Darrow had a particuar facility for drawing childen,
and this talent naturally led him into illustrating quite a few successful picure books,
alongside his ongoing advertising work and continuing popularity at the New Yorker.
And in the 1960s and 70s Darrow increasingly turned to book work, some of which was aimed
at children and some which was more adult in its humour, even if largely about children.
Perhaps the most popular of these was 1963's a Childs Guide to Freud,
written by Louise Armstrong, which was comically ilustrated throughoot in monochrome by Darrow.
And in the same year Art Linkletter's Kids Sure
Rite Funny was also published and sold in large numbers.
Johnny Carson's Happiness is a Dry Martini was published in 1965 as an adult parody
of the Peanuts book Happiness is a Warm Puppy which had been published some 3 years earlier.
And although Darrow's gestural monochromes were among his most casually drawn
they were nevertheless a telling comic contribution to the books popularity.
In 1968 Darrow produced a series of agreeably absurd colour illustrations
for Robert Kraus's chldrens story Unidentified Flying Elephant.
This proved to be a collaboration made in heaven,
and the exuberent comical and brightly coloured illustrations he created for this picture book
were undoubtedly some his finest and most imaginative narrative work.
In 1970 Darrow published his book I’m Glad I’m a Boy/I'm Glad I'm a Girl
and naturally enough its gender stereotyping theme caused outrage within the feminist movement,
who condemned it as an outrageously sexist publication. It's been argued by some that
Darrow was being ironic but either way I doubt the book will be getting reprinted any time soon.
The less contentious Shiver Gobble and Snore,
written by Marie Winn on the unlikely subject of laws and their enforcement
proved to be a another popular collaborative humorous project when it was published in 1971.
Other books for young and not so young continued to be published throughout
the 1970s and the last of these appears to be what Dr. Spock didn't tell us in 1980.
Whitney Darrow created his last drawing for the New Yorker in 1982
and following his retirement he died inVermont in 1999 at the age of 90.
That's all for now so I hope I'lll se you next time around with another quartet.