In addition to his talents as an illustrator Apel les Mestres was a highly successful musical
composer, author and poet, and yet for most he now languishes in the darker recesses of
cultural memory.
He was born in Barcelona in Catalonia in northeastern Spain in 1854, the son of a prominent architect
and in his teens he travelled widely throughout eEurope .
He studied art at Barcelona's Escola de la Llotja, and in 1875 he published the first
of what would be several book of poems.
From 1877 onward he had illustrations and cartoons published regularly in several Catalan
newspapers and magazines, and having made a solid reputation in his own province he
went on to create many more images for a number of well regarded Spanish magazines.
2 years later in 1879 he published a colour edition of Don Quixote based on his watercolour
originals, and although the chromolithographic printing was far from a runaway success the
underlying images were both highly imaginative and well considered.And it proved to be a
popular edition in Spain at least.
In 1882 he published a collection of his writing and humorous line illustrations in two volumes
collectively titled Cuentos Vivos, which brought him more popular success.
and in 1884 he published a visualisation of the dance of death with a series of broadly
comic quasi-medieval cartoons.
in the same year he began an elaborate series of journals and sketchbooks featuring watercolour
and line drawings titled Llibre Vert. But the tragedy of this body of work is that when
it was created there was no way to reproduce it with any success, as full colour lithography
was still some years distant. Nevertheless enough of this precious collection has survived
and Im able to at least show some examples from it.
In 1885 Les Mestres married, but it seems that around this time he was more active as
a writer and composer and it wasn't until the turn of the century that his pen and ink
drawings were regularly published in Blanco Y Negro magazine. He also became a popular
choice to create comic postcards, and among others he created several series where 3 separate
images made up the total picture.
But it was in 1907 that he published a book which was undoubtedly one of the greatest
achievements of his career. This was this visualisation of the fantasy
poem Liliana, and it contained an abundance of evocative pen and ink drawings which combined
folk and fairy tale elements using both humour and romance with equal dexterity. Unlike his
earlier work these images were not printed from engravings. Consequently they were absolutely
faithful reproductions of his original pen and ink drawings . The book remains a largely
forgotten but important fantasy illustration masterpiece.
Sadly throughout his adult life Les Mestres had suffered persistent poor health which
resulted in his doctor insisting that he should be confined to his home for some 14 years,
and whatever its other benefits this confinement didn't do much fir his mental well being by
all accounts.
And By 1912 his deteriorating vision, almost certainly caused by cataracts, forced him
to stop working altogether. A few years later he did compose publish some songs which became
popular in the region, but In 1915 just to add to his misery his wife Laura died,
And in 1936, just after the start of the Spanish civil war, Apel les Mestres died, at the age
of 81
I have no idea why but French illustrator and poster artist Henri Thiriet also used
the more English sounding Henry with a Y, which led to some unwanted confusion in my
research.
He was born in 1873 in Épinal in Eastern France and that's pretty much that for biography.
It seems he did not have any formal art education, and from 1890, when he would have been 17,
he started work at a lithographic print shop in Paris, where he learned the print process
and how to work successfully with it in his illustrated work. Before long he had become
an invaluable resource for the company and he. created a large number of advertising
posters which they printed and distributed around the country.
Naturally enough for the time all his posters displayed a particularly strong art nouveau
influence, with the use of attractive female characters and flowing organic graphic support.
among many other cultural and technological developments of this historical period was
the spectacular growth in popularity of the humble bicycle, and
Consequently many of Thiriet's posters were promoting that form of transport and usually
in quite fanciful ways, with allusions to fantasy and romance in the settings created.
But alongside his success in posters even by the turn of the century he was getting
involved in other areas of expression such as book and postcard work, and also had some
success as a painter.
But during the first decade of the century he stopped creating posters in favour of book
illustration and simultaneously abandoned the graphic principles of Art Nouveau.
In 1908 the book Le Prisonnier de la Planète Mars was published and although not very well
printed as tonal monochromes the illustrations he created for this book showed an obvious
talent for visualising the improbable narrative with considerable plausibility.
Two years later Paul D'Ivoi's science fiction tale Les Dompteurs de l'Or was published with
a colour cover and more tonal monochrome page illustrations which in this book at least
were far more clearly printed.
Sadly this wasn't true of 1913's gloriously over the top story La Guerre des Vampires,
and hot on the heels of this book's publication France found themselves at War with Germany
from 1914 to 1918. And it was only when it ended that he returned to the illustration
of popular novels with pen and ink drawings for 1920's The Crumbs of Glory, written by
Émile Pech.
In 1925 he became the City councillor and deputy mayor of the town of Créteil but didn't
abandon illustration, and In the mid 1920s he created a number of duotone watercolour
cover illustrations for a series of popular adventure stories written by various French
writers for the Jules Tallendier publishing house.
But more significantly in 1930 his colour illustrations for a new edition of Perrault's
fairy tales was published, and it was a great success. This wasn't surprising as the quality
of these brightly coloured pen and wash illustrations perfectly captured the essence and period
charm of Perrault's fanciful stories, many of which would later be adapted by and credited
to others including the Brothers Grimm and Hans Andersen.
I found nothing produced later than this but if this was in fact his last major work it
was a fitting end to a significant and diverse illustration career. And Henri Thiriet died
in Créteil in 1946 at the age of 73.
Wallace Morgan was born in New York City in 1875 but not long after his birth the whole
family moved to Albany. It seems he was clear in his ambitions from an early age and as
soon as he had finished high school he returned to the city, and took tuition at the National
Academy of Design while also working part time at the New York Sun .
In 1898 when he was 23 years old, he took a full time job with the New York Herald as
a journalistic illustrator. The nature of this work honed his ability to work fast and
accurately In 1907 Morgan illustrated the comic strip
Fluffy Ruffles, with verses written originally by Carolyn Wells, although only a year later
she was replaced by Charles Loomis. It became immensely popular and led to the publication
of books made up from the series of newspaper features they had created.This was a remarkable
piece of work, not only because of the expressive qualities and visual engagement of his gestural
brush and pen drawings. Although this was not a book for children it was effectively
a picture book and the visual element was easily the dominant aspect of the book, and
highly unusual for the time. But despite his full time job with the Herald
Morgan was also working for others, including Life, for whom he created some frivolous colour
work. In 1908 Morgan illustrated the book Cy Whittaker's
Place, written by Joseph C Lincoln, with a large volume of remarkably evocative pen and
inks. And he was prolific as a book illustrator in this period with many more highly descriptive
monochromes for others including Rosnah by Myra Kelly, and two for the author Richard
Harding Davis with 1912's Red Cross Girl, and The Lost Road, published a year later.
Not long after, Collier's magazine sent him on a mission to tour the USA with the writer
Julian Street. This task kept him creatively occupied for several years and as well as
the magazine articles their accounts of their travels spawned 2 popular books which were
published in 1914. When America joined the allies to fight in
World War One Morgan put his ability to sketch quickly to good use with a series of expressive
visual descriptions of combat with an immediacy lacking in photography at the time. And they
formed an exceptionally immersive historical record of the conflict.
After the war, Morgan returned to work in his studio in New York City and illustrated
Ring Lardner's comical account My Four Weeks in France with a series of graphite and charcoal
illustrations possessed of considerable comic energy.
Throughout the 20s and into the 30s he remained a ubiquitous presence in books and increasingly
featured in popular magazines, and although his undoubted strength was in his ability
as a linear illustrator there were also a few of his illustrations published using overlaid
washes of bright loosely applied watercolour, including the book We Owed It To The Children
written by Grace Roosevelt and published in 1935.
And following a 40 year career in illustration Wallace Morgan died at home of a heart attack
in 1948 when he was 73 years old British designer and illustrator
Dora Batty was born in Colchester, Essex,in 1891 the youngest of three daughters of Rev.
Thomas Batty and his wife.
She later attended Chelmsford School of Science and Art, but unfortunately the earliest example
of her work I've been able to find is the first poster she designed for London Transport
in 1921, by which time she would already have been 30 years old.
Many more commissions from London Transport followed throughout the decade, all of which
fell broadly into line with the Art Deco style popular in Brtiain at the time. Batty displayed
a keen sense of aesthetic balance and particularly effective use of limited palettes of flat
colour in the images she produced
She also found time to create line only illustrations for a trio of books of poetry written by W.
H. Davies between 1925 and 1927. Nevertheless London Transport continued to be her principle
client and by this point she had become one of the company's most frequently commissioned
poster designers, with a series of particularly striking images which successfully combined
the sensibility and languid grace of fashion illustration with a natural flair for floral
decoration. Around the turn of the decade she also created
some showcards for a shoe manufacturer and also enjoyed considerable success as both
a textile designer and as a ceramic designer for a range of major companies in Britain.
From 1932, Batty taught textile design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, but
continued to work in all her creative endeavours simultaneously. And she was prolific in her
creation of transport related posters throughout the decade up to the outbreak of war in 1939.
At which point her output slowed considerably and other than a couple of fairly minor commissions
the last dated example of illustration wotk Ive been able to find is 1944's The Giant
Without a Heart. An old Norse fairy tale, for which she produced a series figure-based
narrative images.
But she continued in her role as an academic and created textile design up to her retirement
in 1958,and Dora Batty died in Essex at the age of 75 in 1966.
Which brings us to the end of this one and I hope to see you again when the next one
is uploaded.