Everett
Shinn is another of those artists whose pen & ink and color work are
shifting favorites. Shinn, born in 1876, had a long and varied and
illustrious career. He was, at various and often concurrent times, an
illustrator for magazines like Harper's, McClure's, Look,
Judge, Life, etc., a noted painter of New York street life
(part of The Eight or The Ashcan School of the
early 20th century), an interior decorator of sorts, a muralist, a painter
of theater and circus scenes, and a book illustrator. You can read all about
his fascinating life in Everett Shinn 1876-1953 A Figure in His Time,
by Edith de Shazo. I'm going to focus here on his illustrations.
Above
left is a drawing from McClure's Magazine for June 1898. Drawn by
Shinn after a photograph, it is one of the earliest works I've seen by him.
The vast majority of the material he did prior to this was for newspapers.
They are most ephemeral and scarce. At right is the frontispiece for
Barbara Frietchie, a book from 1900. But it's not until 1938 that Shinn
as book illustrator really emerges.
In
a wonderful series of books published by John C. Winston and Garden City
Publishing Co., Shinn brought his considerable talents to such commercial
titles as Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Christmas in Dickens,
Poems of Childhood, The Happy Prince, Rip Van Winkle,
The Life of Our Lord and other religious titles. The books were all
profusely illustrated with shimmering color plates and exquisite pen
drawings. There must be a dozen titles in all, and each is a special joy
with lush color endpapers and finely-wrought pen work in addition to the
nicely-printed color
plates. They represent what I consider to be a high point in his career. Yet
they are not even mentioned in A Figure in His Time! Go
figure...
Above left (in green) is one of the marginal
drawings from Rip Van Winkle (1939) and directly above is a depiction
of Scrooge from A Christmas Carol (1938). And below is one of the six
full-page plates he did for a book called The United States Army in
1941. Like I said, you can read all about the rest of his life in de Shazo's
book, but this wonderful later work is only
documented here. I think it resonates of illustrator/artist prejudice, don't
you?
Information supplied by: http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/manymore2.htm