1940s Seagram's V.O. Canadian Whiskey: Candid Camera Color

   
     Wally made this series of illustrations for the Seagram Distillers Corporation based out of New York during WWII.  The main dialog of the advertisement touts mankind's progress through the advent of color photography, or at least the ability for the average Joe to develop it in his own home.  For photography enthusiasts, this must have been tremendously exciting.  I remember Grandpa had several enlargers in his basement, where I watched him develop film, cut glass and build frames.  Those were the days.

I wouldn't normally associate whiskey with photography.  But perhaps it isn't all that unusual.  I'd guess that 90% of all photography on Facebook has involved alcohol in one way or another.  Additionally, it isn't unusual to acknowledge mankind's ability to create fine photography and fine whiskey as "the result of the planning of many men over many years."  

     My modern sentiments would add, of course, that women probably played a larger role in the consumption as well as the developement of whiskey then this agency or era felt it appropriate to acknowledge :)

1943 Eureka Vacuum Cleaner Company

     This illustration for Eureka appeared in the Saturday Evening Post on November 20, 1943.  

    This illustration titled, "To Johnny_ with Love from Mom!" explains that "more than 70% of Eureka's employees are women and they making gas masks, signaling devices, the small but powerful precision control motors vital to our fighting planes."  It's an interesting example of the role crucial role women played at the home front during World War II.  

1944 Budweiser Advertisement: Ye Olde Melting Pot

     Grandpa made several illustrations for Anheuser Busch's classic in the 1940s and 50s.  In this illustration, "Help Your Community Drives ...and You Help America," the advertising company gives an interesting story about how communities during the colonial period (pre-1776) would contribute to a struggling family by setting up a 'melting pot before the door.'  I have no idea if there is truth to this, but it is an interesting concept.  As a father of two small children, this certainly doesn't sound like the safest of fundraisers a community could think of.



     According to the advertisement, during WWII, Anheuser - Busch which was based in St. Louis "supplied the armed forces with glider and bomber fuselage frames, wing parts, gun turret parts, foodstuffs, as well as ingredients for the manufacture of rubber, aluminum, munitions, medicines, B complex vitamins, hospital diets, baby foods, bread and other bakery products, vitamin-fortified cattle feeds, batteries, paper soap and textiles" and more.   

     A very impressive list of contributions.  Good thing we passed the 21st Amendment in 1933 :) 

1940s Texaco Havoline Custom Made Motor Oil Commercial

     This Texaco commercial was printed probably in the 1940s or 1950s.  It is one of a series of commercials that Walter Richards made for The Texas Company, probably while working for the Charles E. Cooper Studio.

     I say 'probably' because it is found in one of his portfolios marked "Charles E. Cooper."  These portfolios consist of what seems to be random examples of his commercial art in the form of magazines clippings.

SEP Du Pont Cellophane Illustration from WWII

This illustration was published in Saturday Evening Post during World War II.

     The specific date is unknown.

1943 Packard Precision-Built Power Advertisement

     This series of illustrations was produced for Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan during World War II.  

     Packard was a major competitor to other manufacturing giants such as General Motors and Ford.  Like GM, the company mass produced high-precision parts for the US Military during World War Two.    

    This advertisement includes no less than a dozen drawings that make up the commercial's composition.  

   

The Supercharger rotates at 25,00 RPMs!  Faster than the speed of sound!

1955 American Legion Cover: The Statue of Liberty

     A great advantage of working for an art conglomerate like the Charles E. Cooper Studio in mid-twentieth century New York City is that it can bring exposure, recognition, and prestige to an artist.  For decades, the CEC Studio attracted, developed and promoted an astounding number talented artists such as James Bama, Sheila Beckett, Bernie D'Andrea, Stevan Dohanos, George Hughes, Al Parker, Coby Whitmore, and Jon Whitcomb.  

Pages 2-3 of  "Facts & Figures About Charles E. Cooper, Inc."

     You'll find their commercial art throughout all of the most recognized magazines of America's past.  And on their covers.  Many of them are in the Illustrator Hall of Fame today.  They also represented brands that we consider today icons of American industry and commerce such as Ford, Cambell, General Electric and General Motors.  

     So it was quite a stroke of luck and fortune that Walter D. Richards came to work there starting in the late 1930s.  He was pulled into the studio in large part because of his friend and fellow artist Stevan Dohanos.   They had met in Cleveland and had studied together under the tutelage of the lithographer and print artist Rockwell Kent.  

   One productive relationship that stemmed from Walter's time at the CEC was with the American Legion Magazine.  Walter DuBois Richards illustrated no less than fifteen covers for the American Legion Magazine over the better part of a decade.  His first cover for this magazine (that I know of) is an animated scene of two men bowling, published in February of 1949.  His final cover was published in June of 1957.  Over the next three decades Wally would produce covers for Argosy Magazine, The Coronet, Men True Adventure, Male, Outdoor Life, Medical Times and more.  

     This particular blog post focuses on his August 1955 cover.  It is a scene of tourists on a ferry heading out to visit the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.   

The American Legion Magazine August 1955 edition.  Cover by Walter DuBois Richards.

   This is a particularly fun post because I've found some provenance for the August cover in the form of  field research photography.  It was buried and undeveloped in the mass of negatives Wally or Glenny had preserved over the decades. 

I highlighted areas of the photograph that Wally used in his cover for American Legion Magazine.

If you look carefully at these pictures you can find the subjects he used for the illustration.



You can find the complete roll Walter took in my Flickr account for this blog by clicking on any of the photographs or scans in this post. 

The Early Years In Black And White

     My grandfather shot thousands upon thousands of rolls of film throughout his life.  My father and I both spent countless hours, days even, saving what film we could find when we were moving my grandmother from their home in New Canaan years ago.  Precious few roles from the 30s, 40s, 50s have survived the test of time.  They are tightly wound up in small metallic canisters with barely legible scribbling on them.  They have titles like "Chuck - folks at Woodstock, NYC BLDGs, East River, Geissman and family, etc."  

They are dangerous and hard to handle so I've only looked at a handful of them.  They consist of mostly family scenes, but some are field research he conducted for his illustrations, and some may be of him and his fellow artist friends from inside his studio at home or the Charles E. Cooper Studio in New York.

     While these rolls have been developed into negatives, scanning them is no easy task.  The older roles have a layer of nitrate embedded into the exposed side of the film stock, which is fascinating to look at but extremely volatile: if ignited it will literally continue to burn even under water.  I don't have the funds to send them off to some specialty store, nor do I feel comfortable mailing such rare and intrinsically valuable material.

 
 
     Enter Benjamin Lipiecki.  He's a friend and coworker, a recent graduate from Emerson College who has a degree in Digital post-production.  He has a love for old cameras and old film, with quite an impressive collection of his own, and approaches his material possessions and projects with a keen eye, thorough and scientific.  He's got a respect for old film like the rolls I have inherited.  It's because of my grandpa, my father and Ben that we are finally, after all these years, getting to see this film come to life in a photograph format: high resolution scans on a computer screen.

     In this blog I will post some of the photographs Wally, Glennie and their friends have taken through the years.  To preserve their originality I've decided not to touch them up, such as remove scratches, improve contrast and exposure (yet).  I hope you enjoy them, they have already brought thrills galore.  I will upload every single photo I scan to this blog's corresponding Flickr account, so look for more pictures there if you are interested.

Thanks again to all who have read this blog! 2,600 views from around the world and counting!   

Collections and Exhibitions for Walter DuBois Richards

The following list of collections and exhibitions was compiled for Walter Richards's last significant exhibition in 1999.  I thought it would be useful for anyone doing a little research on Wally.  I plan on expanding on this list since it has changed somewhat over the years.

Collections:

Cleveland Museum of Art
Department of National Parks
William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum
Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum
New Britain Museum of American Art
Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
U.S. Military Academy Museum, West Point
The Pentagon
Worcester Art Museum
Yale University Museum

Exhibitions:

Art Institute of Chicago
Brooklyn Museum of Art
Cleveland Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
National Academy of Design
New York Historical Society
Ohio Printmakers, Cleveland
Pennsylvania Museum of Art
Philadelphia Print Club
Royal Society of Painters/Printmakers
Smithsonian Institution
The American Watercolor Society
The Society of Illustrators
The White House, Washington
Whitney Museum of American Art



Questions I want to answer:  Which works of WDR do these Museums have?
                                            Which WDR works were used in each exhibition?

The 1946 Directory of United States Illustrators

     This was a great discovery in a box of old books: a compact beat-up binder titled "Official Directory of American Advertising Artists and Illustrators 1946." 

   
     It is more than just a directory of advertising artists and illustrators from that year (or decade depending on how you want to look at it).  

     This booklet reveals a bundle of interesting tidbits of information about illustration art in general.  For example, a short study of its 'Types of Art Work' illuminates how a collection of specific disciplines and their sub-categories together defined the broad field of illustration art in the 1940s.

Walter D. Richards, Illustrator #617

     I gather this tasty glimpse into the business side of American illustration holds credence because of its three primary authors:  The Society of Illustrators, The Art Directors Club N.Y., and The Artists Guild.  That said, of the 104 'representatives' and 826 artists listed, the vast majority of the artists and art studios are in New York City and Chicago.  Three from San Francisco are listed and two from both Los Angeles and Cleveland.  Westport (CT), Dallas, Detroit, Brooklyn and Washington D.C. each had one listing.


     Hmmmm.  I've read that even by the 1940s a very large portion of all advertising in the United States (probably the world for that matter) was hand drawn.  You'd think there'd've been more than 104 entities representing at least one artist in the country.  Then again, when you see the list of companies a label like the Charles E. Cooper Studio held as clients, maybe 104 'representatives' is realistic.


     But enough of this boring rumination.  For the fun of it, I've typed out each category and sub-category that is found in the directory.  Eventually, I would like to include the number of corresponding artists in each discipline.  I think there is some fun in the statistics.  Better yet, there might be someone reading this who is actually qualified (not me) to have an opinion or observation about it.

  7 Types of Illustration and 132 Sub-Categories


Illustration: 96 sub-categories ____ artists (numbers to be added later)
     Abstracts:
     Accessories (men's shoes):
     Adventure: 
     Advertising: 
     Airbrush: 
     Americana: See Historical
     Airplanes (aviation):
     Animals:
     Animation:
     Architectural:
     Art:
     Automobiles:
     Birds-Eye: See Outdoors
     Black and White:
     Book:
     Calenders:
     Cartoons:
     Character:
     Children:
     Color:
     Commercial Art:
     Comprehensives:
     Composition:
     Continuities:
     Cosmetics:
     Covers:
     Crayon:
     Decorative:
     Diagrams:  See Technical
     Drybrush:
     Drawings:
     Editorial:
     Fantasy:
     Fashion:
     Fiction:
     Figures:
     Fine Arts: 
     Finished Art:
     Flowers:
     Furniture:
     General:
     Genre:
     Girls:
     Glamour:
     Gnomes:
     Heads:
     Historical:
     Housefurnishings:
     Human Interest:
     Humor:
     Imaginative:
     Illustration:
     Informative:
     Industrial:
     Interiors:
     Magazine:
     Marine:
     Mechanical:
     Medical:
     Merchandise:
     Military:
     Modern:
     Monochrome:
     Murals:
     Music Interpretation:
     Object:
     Oil:
     Oriental:
     Outdoors:
     Painting:
     Pastels:
     Pictorial:
     Portraits:
     Products:
     Realistic:
     Scratchboard:
     Sea Subjects:
     Serious:
     Shoes:
     Sketches:
     Sports:
     Spot:
     Still-Life:
     Story:
     Strips:
     Stylized:
     Surrealist:
     Symbolic:
     Technical:
     Teenage:
     Tempera:
     Textiles:
     Wash:
     Watercolor:
     Western Action:
     Woodcut:


Design: 21 sub-categories ____ Artists
     Book:
     Calligraphy:
     Cartographers:
     Coats-of-Arms:
     Decoration:
     Design:
     Engrossing:
     Graphic:
     Heraldry:
     Humorous:
     Industrial:
     Jewerly:
     Labels:
     Layout:
     Lettering:
     Letterheads:
     Maps: 
     Packaging:
     Trade-Mark:
     Symbolic:
     Typographical:


Posters & Displays: ____ Artists


Art Direction: ____ Artists
     Art Director:
     Catalog:
     Complete Advertisement:
     Consultant:
     Creative:
     Visualizer:


Retouching:  ____ Artists
     Color:
     Retouching:


General: ____ Artists
     Commercial Art, Presentation, Rendering:


Sculpture: ____ Artists
     Clay Modeling:
     Moulage:
     Paper Sculpture:
     Sculpture:


What percentage of the artists are in each category ____?
What percentage of the artists are in each sub-category ____?

1941 Cadillac Fleetwood Advertisement

     In an earlier post about a Cadillac fighter plane illustration I had played with the idea that Wally did a great deal of work for General Motors during World War II because of his experience doing illustrations for Cadillac in the late 1930s and early 1940s.  Here is one of those illustrations.

     While a specific date is no where to be found on this illustration, I would guess it is Cadillac's series 67/75 Fleetwood limousine.  It was introduced in 1941 as one of Cadillac's premiere luxury vehicles.  Here's the wikipedia take on this series.  

     What is also interesting about this illustration is that it is a color proving stock for Fortune Magazine, where it was published.  This scan below is the backside to the above illustration for Cadillac.  

     Someday, when I can find the time, I'd love to know more about what this proving stock really is, and what role did it play for Fortune Magazine.  Furthermore, why did my grandfather have this in his possession?

Daniel Boone Never Heard Of Logistics: the AAR in 1950

     Walter Richards made this illustration of Daniel Boone for the Association of American Railroads in 1950.

     The exact date for the publication is unknown.  On the following side of this illustration the date 1950 can be seen.

     My father found two of these illustration magazine clippings that either Wally or his wife had set aside as an illustration Wally had done.