Happy Leyendecker Baby New Year 2014!

Happy Leyendecker Baby New Year 2014!, J.C. Leyendecker
As I’ve done every year since 2006, I’ll wish all Lines and Colors readers a Happy New Year with more New Years babies from the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, by the great American illustrator, J.C. Leyendecker.

Lots of great art in the year to come!

 
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Turner & the Sea

Turner & the Sea, JMW Turner at Maritime Museum
The great English landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner, known rightfully as “the painter of light”, may just as well be called a painter of seascapes — so often did he return to the subjects of ships and the sea.

Turner portrayed the sea in all of its moods, but preferred his seas shaken and stirred, whether by riotous storms or the churning clashes of great warships.

Britain’s National Maritime Museum has amounted the first major exhibition devoted specifically to Turner’s marine paintings: Turner & the Sea.

There is a slideshow preview of works form the exhibition on the Telegraph. The museum has also produced a nicely animated promo video for the show, in which some of Turner’s paintings are digitally animated (see my recent post on Van Gogh Shadow).

For those, like myself, who would have to make an unlikely sea voyage themselves to attend the show in person, there is a book published to accompany the exhibition, Turner & the Sea.

In addition there are some high-resolution images of Turner’s works in general on the Google Art Project, some of which are also available in downloadable form on Wikimedia Commons, along with a range of smaller images.

Turner & the Sea is on view until 21 April 2014.

 
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Gustaf Tenggren (update)

Gustaf Tenggren
Like his fellow illustrator and predecessor on Bland Tomtar och Troll (Among Elves and Trolls), John Bauer, Swedish-American illustrator Gustaf Tenggren doesn’t get the recognition he deserves, even among aficionados of Golden Age illustration.

Ironically, Tenggren is probably better known for his later, very different style, in which he illustrated The Poky Little Puppy, than for his marvelous dark forests full of trolls and heroes, in which he picked up where Bauer left off.

Hopefully, Tenggren’s level of recognition may change, as he is the focus of a new website and blog devoted to the artist, and maintained by Lars Emanuelsson. Perhaps more importantly, Emanuelson is at work on a new biography of Tenggren, due to be released next year.

The Tenggren website is an excellent resource on the artist, with a biography and a history of his several periods of illustration and movie production work, along with a gallery of images.

Unfortunately, the images in the gallery, though numerous, are small. For larger images, I’ll point to articles on the Animation Resources site that revives much of the now gone ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archives site (see links below).

For more, see my previous post on Gustaf Tenggren.

[Suggestion courtesy of: Bertil Saukkoriipi]

 
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The Adoration of the Kings (Monforte Altar)

The Adoration of the Kings (Monforte Altar), Hugo van der Goes
The Adoration of the Kings (Monforte Altar), Hugo van der Goes

On Google Art Project. Also high-res version on Wikipedia, and on Wikimedia Commons with selected details. Article on Wikipedia. Original is in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

 
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Illustrators’ Visions of Santa Claus (update)

Illustrator's Visions of Santa Claus: Thomas Nast, Reginald Birch, J.C. Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Haddon Sundblom

A follow-up to my 2006 article on “Illustrator’s Visions of Santa Claus“, in which I attempted to chronicle how 19th and early 20th century illustrators shaped our contemporary vision of the Jolly One.

(Images above: Thomas Nast, Reginald Birch, J.C. Leyendecker, N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell and Haddon Sundblom — with detail)

 
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