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Illustrators

Clare Briggs

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Artist:Clare Briggs
Books Available:4
Latest Book:Golf - Clare Briggs | Uploaded: Aug 7, 2023
Clare A. Briggs (August 5, 1875 - January 3, 1930) was an early American comic strip artist who rose to fame in 1904 with his strip A. Piker Clerk. Briggs was best known for his later comic strips When a Feller Needs a Friend, Ain't It a Grand and Glorious Feeling?, The Days of Real Sport, and Mr. and Mrs.

Born in Reedsburg, Wisconsin, Briggs lived there until the age of nine. In 1884, his family moved to Dixon, Illinois, where he started his newspaper career at age ten, delivering the local paper to subscribers for 40 cents a week while wearing a red, white and blue cap with the name of the newspaper.

While attending the University of Nebraska for two years, he studied drawing and stenography. Employment as a stenographer brought him six dollars a week when the work was available. One of his art instructors was an editor with Western Penman, where his first published drawings appeared. His mathematics teacher was Lieutenant John J. Pershing. "If ever a fellow needed a friend, I did in mathematics," said Briggs. "It happened that Lieutenant Pershing was my instructor, and I believe he will testify that it was easier to conquer Germany than to teach me math. One day he ordered me to the blackboard to demonstrate a theorem, and while I was giving the problem a hard but losing battle, he remarked: 'Briggs, sit down, you don't know anything.' Right then and there, I decided to become a newspaper man."

Briggs began his career as a newspaper sketch artist in St. Louis, Missouri with the Globe-Democrat, which sent him off to cover the Spanish-American War as an editorial cartoonist. Relocating in New York, his drawings for the New York Journal prompted William Randolph Hearst to send Briggs to the Chicago Herald and the Chicago's American, where he created A. Piker Clerk, often described as the first daily continuity comic strip. After 17 years in Chicago (living in the community of Riverside, Illinois), Briggs returned to New York to spend the remaining 13 years of his life with the New York Tribune. He lived in to the suburban community of New Rochelle, a well-known art colony and home to a majority of the top commercial illustrators of the day. During the 1920s, the New Rochelle Art Association commissioned its best known artists to create a series of signs on major roadways to mark the borders, including "New Rochelle The Place To Come When a Feller Needs a Friend", which was created by Briggs representing one of his major comics, "When a Feller Needs a Friend". (source: wikipedia)

Palmer Cox

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Artist:Palmer Cox
Books Available:7
Latest Book:Brownies Around the World - Palmer Cox | Uploaded: Apr 30, 2024
Categories:Fantasy/Whimsey
Palmer Cox (April 28, 1840 - July 24, 1924) was a Canadian illustrator and author,best known for The Brownies, his series of humorous verse books and comic strips about the mischievous but kindhearted fairy-like sprites. The cartoons were published in several books, such as The Brownies, Their Book (1887). Due to the popularity of Cox's Brownies, one of the first popular handheld cameras was named after them, the Eastman Kodak Brownie camera.

He was born in Granby, Quebec, the son of Michael and Sarah (Miller) Cox, and became a carpenter and car builder. He moved to San Francisco via Panama as a railroad contractor, and he lived in there from 1863 to 1875. In 1874, he began to formally study drawing and contribute illustrated stories to such publications as Golden Era and Alta California. After 1875, Cox lived in New York (Pine View House, East Quogue, Long Island). During this time he regularly contributed editorial cartoons to Oscar Hammerstein's United States Tobacco Journal.

The earliest publication of Brownie characters took place in 1879, but not until the February 1881 issue of Wide Awake magazine were the creatures printed in their final form. In 1883, Brownie stories appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine and as their popularity rose, they were covered in publications such as the Ladies' Home Journal.

Cox's Brownies were little men who had mischievous adventures together. Each Brownie had a distinctive physical appearance: Cholly Boutonnière wore a top hat and monocle, while others wore traditional Turkish, Irish, German, Swedish, Russian, and Chinese garb. There was an Eskimo, an American Indian, even an Uncle Sam. "Much of the success of his books can be attributed to his treatment of the characters, who portray human nature with its goodness and strength and also its follies, but never its baseness." (source: wikipedia)

Walter Crane

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Artist:Walter Crane
Books Available:6
Latest Book:Illustrations to Shakespeare's Tempest - Walter Crane | Uploaded: Apr 30, 2024
Categories:Fantasy/Whimsey
Walter Crane (15 August 1845 - 14 March 1915) was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most influential, and among the most prolific, children's book creators of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of English children's illustrated literature would exhibit in its developmental stages in the later 19th century.

Crane's work featured some of the more colourful and detailed beginnings of the child-in-the-garden motifs that would characterize many nursery rhymes and children's stories for decades to come. He was part of the Arts and Crafts movement and produced an array of paintings, illustrations, children's books, ceramic tiles, wallpapers and other decorative arts. Crane is also remembered for his creation of a number of iconic images associated with the international socialist movement.

His varied work includes examples of plaster relief, tiles, stained glass, pottery, wallpaper, and textile designs, in all of which he applied the principle that in purely decorative design "the artist works freest and best without direct reference to nature, and should have learned the forms he makes use of by heart" (source: wikipedia)
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A.B. Frost

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Artist:A.B. Frost
Books Available:4
Latest Book:Bull Calf and Other Tales - A.B. Frost | Uploaded: Nov 9, 2022
Arthur Burdett Frost (January 17, 1851 - June 22, 1928), usually cited as A. B. Frost, was an American illustrator, graphic artist, painter and comics writer. He is best known for his illustrations of Brer Rabbit and other characters in the Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus books.

Frost's work is known for its dynamic representation of motion and sequence and for his realistic hunting, shooting and golfing prints. He illustrated over 90 books, produced hundreds of paintings and was a pioneer in the development of comic strips.

In 1892, Frost partnered with Joel Chandler Harris and included his drawings of Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit and other characters into the book Uncle Remus and His Friend. Frost and Harris published several additional versions of the Uncle Remus books including Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings in 1895 and 1898.

Frost was influenced by the serial photography work of Eadward Muybridge and translated his photographic approach to create successive illustration panels and dialogue which was a pioneering form of comic strips and comic books.

In 1884, Frost published Stuff and Nonsense, an anthology of his works that advanced the concept of time-stop drawings and contained other innovations. Although he was never published in newspapers, Frost's work was influential on newspaper comic strip illustrators such as Rudolph Dirks and Jimmy Swinnerton.

Frost incorporated his interest in hunting, shooting and golf into multiple illustrations and publications. He was an avid golfer and a member of the Morris County Golf Club in Morristown, New Jersey during the initial uptake of the sport in the United States. His sketches of golf players focused on the drama and passion of the players set in detailed backgrounds. His golf illustrations were included in The Golfer's Alphabet (1898), The Epic of Golf (1923) and on two covers of Collier's magazine. (source: wikipedia)

Charles Dana Gibson

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Artist:Charles Dana Gibson
Books Available:13
Latest Book:The Man and His Art - Charles Dana Gibson | Uploaded: Feb 18, 2023
Categories:Humor
Charles Dana Gibson (September 14, 1867 - December 23, 1944) was an American illustrator who created the Gibson Girl, an iconic representation of the beautiful and independent American woman at the turn of the 20th century.

He published his illustrations in Life magazine and other major national publications for more than 30 years, becoming editor in 1918 and later owner of the general interest magazine.

A talented youth with an early interest in art, Gibson was enrolled by his parents in New York City's Art Students League, where he studied for two years.

Peddling his pen-and-ink sketches, Gibson sold his first work in 1886 to Life magazine, founded by John Ames Mitchell and Andrew Miller. It featured general interest articles, humor, illustrations, and cartoons. His works appeared weekly in the popular national magazine for more than 30 years. He quickly built a wider reputation, with his drawings being featured in all the major New York publications, including Harper's Weekly, Scribners and Collier's. His illustrated books include the 1898 editions of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau as well as Richard Harding Davis' Gallegher and Other Stories.

It is an oft-repeated urban legend that Gibson's wife and her elegant Langhorne sisters inspired his famous Gibson Girls, who became iconic images in early 20th-century society. The truth is that the first Gibson Girl appeared in 1890, more than two years before Gibson ever met the Langhorne family, and in later years it became fashionable for many of Gibson's friends and family to model for his illustrations.

After the death of John Ames Mitchell in 1918, Gibson became editor of Life and later took over as owner of the magazine. As the popularity of the Gibson Girl faded after World War I, Gibson took to working in oils for his own pleasure. In 1918, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1932.

He retired in 1936, the same year Scribner's published his biography, Portrait of an Era as Drawn by C. D. Gibson: A Biography by Fairfax Downey. At the time of his death in 1944, he was considered "the most celebrated pen-and-ink artist of his time as well as a painter applauded by the critics of his later work." (source: wikipedia)

Phil May

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Artist:Phil May
Books Available:3
Latest Book:Gutter-Snipes - Phil May | Uploaded: Jun 8, 2022
Philip William May (22 April 1864 - 5 August 1903) was an English caricaturist who, with his vigorous economy of line, played an important role in moving away from Victorian styles of illustration towards the creation of the modern humorous cartoon.

At the age of twelve, in Leeds, May became friendly with Fred Fox, whose father was the scenic artist at the recently opened Grand Theatre. That gave him a free run of the theatre, where he used to sketch sections of other people's designs for costumes, as well as sketching actors' portraits, for which he received one shilling, later rising to five shillings.

When only fourteen years old, had drawings accepted for the Yorkshire Gossip. When he was about seventeen he went to London with a sovereign in his pocket. He suffered extreme want, sleeping out in the parks and streets, until he obtained employment as designer to a theatrical costumier. He also drew posters and cartoons, and for about two years worked for the St Stephens Review, until he was advised to go to Australia for his health.

During the three years (1886-1889) he spent in Australia he was attached to The Sydney Bulletin, or The Bulletin as it was better known, for which many of his best drawings were made. He produced about 800 drawings for The Bulletin.

While drawing for The Bulletin he would produce the illustration "The Mongolian Octopus" (1886), an anti-Chinese cartoon which has been described as "the most scandalous and racist cartoon ever to grace the Australian media". The Bulletin’s motto at this time was "Australia for the White Man"; May himself has been described as "openly racist and anti-Semitic".

On his return his studies of the London guttersnipe and the coster-girl rapidly made him famous. His overflowing sense of fun, his genuine sympathy with his subjects, and his kindly wit were on a par with his artistic ability.

May was a major influence on the style of cartoon drawing in the 20th century. In 1918, Percy Bradshaw wrote in The Art of the Illustrator that May "surely gave more magic to a single line than any draftsman who has ever lived, and he was unquestionably the creator of the simplified technique of modern humorous drawing". (source: wikipedia)

Peter Newell

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Artist:Peter Newell
Books Available:6
Latest Book:Topsys & Turvys - Peter Newell | Uploaded: Jul 21, 2022
Peter Sheaf Hersey Newell (March 5, 1862 - January 15, 1924) was an American artist and writer. He created picture books and illustrated new editions of many children's books.

Newell built a reputation in the 1880s and 1890s for his humorous drawings and poems, which appeared in Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, Scribner's Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, Judge, and other publications. He later wrote and illustrated several popular children's books, such as Topsys and Turvys (1893), a collection of poems and images which could be viewed upside-down or right-side-up; The Hole Book (1908), which had a literal hole at the center of each page to indicate the path of a bullet; and The Slant Book (1910), which took the shape of a rhomboid and told the story of a baby carriage careening down a hill.

Newell often illustrated the works of other authors, such as Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, John Kendrick Bangs, and Lewis Carroll. He also created a comic strip serial, The Naps of Polly Sleepyhead, which debuted in the New York Herald in 1905. (source: wikipedia)
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