Treasures and Musings @ Modern Graphic History Library

Mario Cooper Illustrating Agatha Christie

During her lifetime, British mystery writer Agatha Christie published 66 detective novels. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s -- the peak of Christie's career -- in the U.S. these works often first appeared as serials in magazines like Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, and Redbook, giving fans an opportunity to read and follow a story months before the book's publication.  While many artists illustrated her work, perhaps no illustrator collaborated with her more than Mario Cooper; by our count his illustrations accompany at least 8 of her novels that appeared in Collier's. Cooper's illustrations for Christie's fiction are striking, economical, and bring a bit of glamor to detective fiction. All of the images below are tear sheets from the Charles Craver Collection. To learn more about the collection or Mario Cooper, check out the collection's finding aid.

Cooper's first illustrations for Christie were Appointment with Death, which Collier's published in nine installments from August 28 to October 23, 1937. This novel, as all of the others in this post, feature Christie's best-known and most frequently used character, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. The amazing sky in the background of the first image reveals Cooper's expertise with watercolors; for many years he taught the medium, and from 1959 to 1986 was president of the American Watercolor Society.

Murder for Christmas (published in the UK as Hercule Poirot’s Christmas) followed Appointment with Death. It appeared in ten parts in Collier's from November 12, 1938 to January 14, 1939. This illustration (like the one below from The Patriotic Murders) has relatively few components, but the simple, if slightly off composition and bold color perfectly convey the tension in Christie's fiction.

Sad Cypress appeared in Collier's in ten parts from November 25, 1939 to January 27, 1940. Reviews of the novel ranged from modestly positive to lukewarm, perhaps the inevitable result of being the follow up to the wildly popular And Then There Were None, Christie's biggest success and the best-selling mystery of all time.

The Patriotic Murders (published under the name One Two, Buckle My Shoe in the UK) appeared in nine installments from August 3 to September 28, 1940.

A Look at John Gannam’s Pacific Balanced Sheets Advertisements

This week's post was written by MGHL's student worker Kara Gordon. Kara is helping us digitize tear sheets in the Charles Craver Collection and came across a series of Balanced Pacific Sheets ads illustrated by John Gannam. To learn more about Gannam, check out the Charles Craver Collection finding aid.

I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen the illustration of a girl on a bed reading the comics section of the newspaper ("Gone Gal"). Whether it comes up in a classroom slideshow or on my tumblr dashboard, it is an iconic illustration, even 65 years after its original publication.

Life, September 27, 1948

I had no idea that it was an ad for bed sheets.

John Gannam actually did several illustrations for the Pacific Balanced Sheets campaign during the 1940's. Advertisements, unlike fiction, are property of a corporation, rather than the publication itself. In other words, you see the same advertisement pop up in several magazines. Such is the case with the "Fair Morning" illustration, which in 1946 appeared both in an April issue of Life and May issue of Ladies’ Home Journal.

Life, April 29, 1946

Ladies' Home Journal, May 1946

Aside from the obvious scale shift to fit the format of the magazines, there are other discrepancies between the printings of this illustration. Life’s version is slightly cropped, making the woman an even larger component of the composition. The text, because of the format size, is spread out over three lines rather than four, giving the illustration even more prominence on the page. The most noticeable difference, however, is the color. The version in Ladies’ Home Journal was printed with significantly more magenta than the one in Life. The result is two completely different color atmospheres: a cooler spring morning in Life, a warm summer in Ladies’ Home Journal, all because of the percentage of magenta used on the same illustration.

Illustrator Spotlight: Harold von Schmidt

This week we're featuring the work of Harold von Schmidt, one of the most successful and important illustrators of the mid-twentieth century. The details of the illustrator's early life read almost like fiction: Born in California in 1893, von Schmidt was orphaned at age 5. After a year in an orphanage, he was taken in by his grandfather, a forty-niner whose stories helped instill in the artist a lifelong fascination with the Old West. Rugged and athletic, von Schmidt worked as a cowhand and lumberjack as a young man, and participated in the 1920 and 1924 U.S. Olympics as member of the rugby team. He studied at the California College of the Arts and the San Francisco Art Institute, but it wasn't until he moved to New York in 1924 to attend Grand Central Art School and studied with painter Harvey Dunn that his career began to take off.

His illustrations appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Cosmopolitan, and Sunset, most often accompanying Westerns or adventure stories. Although encouraged to do covers, Von Schmidt greatly preferred, and felt his work better suited to, interior illustrations that allowed him to create the kind of realistic action scenes for which he was known. In 1927 he relocated to Westport, Connecticut, where he lived the remainder of his life. In 1948 he became, along with Al Parker, one of the founding members Famous Artists School. (Von Schmidt's1949 Lesson Plan Book for the school is part of the Al Parker Collection.) During his lifetime, he received numerous awards, including induction into the Society of Illustators Hall of Fame in 1959 and the first gold medal from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1968. Tear sheets of von Schmidt's work can be found in the Charles Craver Collection.

If you're interested in seeing more of von Schmidt's work, check out Harold von Schmidt Draws and Paints the Old West or Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop (von Schmidt spent two years working on the illustrations for the novel).

The Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1938

The Saturday Evening Post, January 14, 1939

The Saturday Evening Post, June 18, 1938

Collier's, November 5, 1932

Illustration for mystery novel Dark Revenge which first appeared as an abridged version in The American, in June 1939, and then in book form as Mountain Cat the following month.

Illustrator Spotlight: Robert O. Reid

As part of our recurring feature highlighting lesser-known illustrators, this week we're showcasing Robert O. Reid. Although best known for his illustrations for Collier's during the 1930's and 40's, Reid also did advertising work for companies such as Oldsmobile and Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Humorous situations and cartoonishly-drawn beautiful women are hallmarks of his work, as evident in the selection below. Several tearsheets of his art are in the Charles Craver Collection, and you can find more information about Reid and what we have available by looking at the finding aid.

Illustrator Spotlight: Thelma Mortimer

Continuing with highlights from the Charles Craver Collection, we bring you a few illustrations by Thelma Mortimer. During the 1930's Mortimer's work appeared in Good Housekeeping and Woman's Home Companion, sometimes accompanying fiction, but more often illustrating Companion-Butterick sewing patterns. Looking through the images below, it's easy to see why the company used her work so frequently -- her sleek models and vibrant watercolors make the clothes seem both fashionable and accessible. For more information about Mortimer, check out the Charles Craver Collection finding aid.

Illustrator Spotlight: Harry Beckhoff

MGHL's Charles Craver Collection is comprised of tear sheets featuring the work of dozens of important midcentury illustrators, some more well-known than others. One the collection's lesser-known illustrators that we think deserves a larger audience is Harry Beckhoff. From the late 1920's to the early 1960's Beckhoff did illustrations for numerous books and magazines, most notably Collier's (the periodical in which all of the illustrations we've highlighted first appeared). As evident below, his illustrations are often playful and full of movement, and his style is clean, eye-catching, and almost deceptively simple.

There isn't much information about Beckhoff or his work available online, but you can learn a bit more about him by checking out his bio on the Charles Craver Collection finding aid or reading this post about the illustrator on the blog Today's Inspiration.