Illustrators: American

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Description of Illustrators: American
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Illustrators: American Artists - 37
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Illustrators: American
In America the first illustrators of note were explorers and naturalists documenting the landscape, flora and fauna of the new world, particularly the unexplored western territories. Titian Ramsay Peale served as an artist-naturalist under the Long Exploring expedition to the Upper Mississippi staged in 1818 along with Samuel Seymour, a documentary artist and engraver from Philadelphia who published the first views of the Rocky Mountains in 1820. John James Audubon, an ornithologist as well as an artist, became America’s most famous painter of wildlife with his scientifically accurate depictions of birds as reproduced in his monumental Birds of America published in sections between 1827 and 1838.

Many illustrators published their work in magazines like Collier’s, Harper’s and the Sunday Evening Post. It was these publications, armed with advancements in printing technology, which ushered in the golden age of American illustration which lasted from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth. Howard Pyle has been dubbed the father of American illustration both for his own artistic contributions of illustrations for magazines and books and for the many of his students who went on to become successful illustrators themselves. [See Brandywine School ] N. C. Wyeth is arguably Pyle’s most famous student. He thrived under Pyle’s rigorous discipline and enlarged upon Pyle’s design approach by making compositions more monumental and memorable than those of his teacher.

Important illustrators born in the late 1860’s through 1870’s include Maxfield Parrish, J. C. Leyendecker, Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg and Charles Dana Gibson, famous for his “Gibson Girls.” The best-known illustrator from this period, though, was Norman Rockwell. Rockwell’s depictions of small town life in the U.S.A. appealed to millions. His art became synonymous with the Saturday Evening Post, for which he painted some 322 covers. However, by the mid 1950’s opportunities for making painted illustrations for magazine covers began disappear and the “Golden Age of American Illustration” came to a close. Never the less, the genre has continued to evolve and illustrators today produce visual content for magazines, blogs, comic strips, graphic novels, animated films, advertising campaigns and, of course, children’s books.
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