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Bernard D’Andrea, Saturday Evening Post, November 1957.
Romantic fiction was a staple offer in the pages of Saturday Evening Post and a legion of highly proficient illustrators were on hand to give visual form to tragic and comic stories of love and betrayal. Some of the visual interpretations reveal a psychological complexity in a single image, every bit as effectively as a narrative spread over 8 or 10 pages of text. These illustrators were masters of gesture and expression, expert in capturing minute variations in body language to convey emotional subtleties. This was an age in which prosperity and anxiety seemed to advance in step - the Cold War undermined the sense of national security along with a growing unease that over-consumption and the breakdown in community values as millions moved to the suburbs was corroding the American soul. The fear of crime couldn’t be washed away by alcohol and barbiturates. Communism was an ever present, if ill-defined threat to the American way of life and efforts to eradicate its influence fed the climate of political paranoia. Casual violence toward women and children was broadly condoned while adultery and coercive sex were only condemned if they came to public attention. Maintaining an appearance of moral rectitude was imperative - any fall from grace would be ruthlessly punished by community pressure as much as legal proceedings. Women were often unwelcome and underpaid in the workplace and protection from harassment and exploitation was minimal. All these threads could be found in popular fiction and may explain why so many of these images contain unsettling and ambiguous gestures, glances and facial tensions. Carefree relationships and romantic bliss are in short supply. Surrender to passion is more common, perhaps because it paves the way to the high drama of disillusion, treachery, desertion and cruelty. This selection of images are mostly from Saturday Evening Post - artists are identified and dates of publication supplied where known. Some examples are better than others. The subjects all include a couple - among them are several examples of what illustrators referred to as “the clinch” plus a few from other fiction genres such as crime and adventure.
 Unknown illustrator, Saturday Evening Post. |
Alex Ross in Ladies Home Journal, December 1948.
Saturday Evening Post, illustrator and date unknown.
Joe Bowler, Saturday Evening Post, date unknown.
An expedition to a lingerie store illustrated by Joe De Mers for Saturday Evening Post.
Jon Whitcomb for the readers of Ladies Home Journal, July 1948.
Coby Whitmore for Saturday Evening Post, date unknown.
Saturday Evening Post, date unknown.
A frantic couple under siege - illustrated by Bernard D’Andrea, Saturday Evening Post, "The Hounds Of Youth" (1961).
Thornton Utz illustration for Saturday Evening Post.
Saturday Evening Post, illustrated by Edwin Georgi (1896-1964).
Saturday Evening Post, illustrator and date unknown.
James Bingham, Saturday Evening Post, December 1955.
Alex Ross in Ladies Home Journal, October 1948.
Saturday Evening Post, illustrator and date unknown.
Coby Whitmore for Saturday Evening Post, date unknown.
Peter Stevens (1920-2001) for Saturday Evening Post, September 29, 1956.
Steamy mid-century romance illustrated by Jon Whitcomb for Ladies Home Journal, September 1948.
Coby Whitmore for Saturday Evening Post, 1953.
Saturday Evening Post, illustrator and date unknown.
Lionel Gilbert (1912-2005) for Collier’s Magazine, January 1952.
Saturday Evening Post, illustrator and date unknown.
Peter Stevens (1920-2001) for Saturday Evening Post, date unknown.
Saturday Evening Post, illustrator and date unknown.
3 comments:
If you like these paintings there are hundreds more in these two books. Go to Westread Book Reviews then click 2021 and May to see some inside pages.
The sixties book came out 2010 with 576 pages and the fifties in 2013 with 512 pages. They are still available but expensive so it's worth searching around the net for reasonably priced copies.
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