The newest arrival from Dan Zimmer's Illustrated Press is a major book about illustrator Mead Schaeffer. To write the book, I interviewed Schaeffer's daughter in her home in Vermont and was given exclusive access to Schaeffer's personal scrapbooks.
Schaeffer was unusual in that he had three different incarnations as an illustrator.
From the introduction:
The first time Mead Schaeffer became nationally famous, it was as an illustrator of adventure stories such as The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Les Miserables and Moby Dick. Schaeffer was “one of the foremost illustrators of the romantic era of American fiction” according to illustration historian Fred Taraba. Critic Arpi Ermoyan, in her book Famous American illustrators lauded Schaeffer’s “romantic, swashbuckling and theatrical” paintings which earned him a spot in the illustrators’ Hall of Fame. Schaeffer worked for decades painting evocative mood illustrations for some of the top fiction books and magazines of his day.
The second time Schaeffer became famous it was for a tighter, more realistic style of painting for a very different kind of subject. The harsh realities of World War II changed popular taste from the escapism of costume adventure stories to sober realism about modern day threats. Schaeffer played a significant role during the war years with a series of popular and highly regarded covers for The Saturday Evening Post, painted as tributes to branches of the US armed services. Unlike Schaeffer’s earlier work, these new paintings were precise and accurate down to the last detail, from the buttons on the uniforms to the configuration of the stars overhead.
After the war, Schaeffer became famous a third time. He traveled around the country as a reportorial cover artist for the Post, chronicling American domestic life. Cities, towns and businesses competed for Schaeffer’s attention, eager to win a prized spot on a cover of the Post. By showing the patchwork quilt of America in the 1940s and ‘50s, Schaeffer helped to educate the country. Readers learned about the varied scenes and lifestyles in far corners of America, some of which had previously escaped national attention. In this role, Schaeffer presaged the popular illustrator-as-journalist movement of the 1960s.
By the time Schaeffer retired to a satisfying life as a fisherman, he had become successful and well known for each of these three roles.
The book is now shipping. For those who think they might be interested, you can find a preview on the Illustrated Press web site.
33 comments:
Wow! I have seen all three phases, but somehow I didn't realize the second two phases were the same guy. Two Meade Shaeffers existed in different compartments of my brain. I imagine I'm not alone in valuing the first one highly the latter seems so lacking in vitality by comparison. But I am absolutely awed by the early stuff. The latter work looks like a highly competent Rockwell wannabe.
Thanks for this David. Many years back in my fine art student days I was browsing in a bookshop and came across Arpi Ermoyan’s book Famous American Illustrators. With the exception of Norman Rockwell I had not seen and knew nothing of the illustrators within its pages, but purchased it with what little money I had because I was impressed by so many of the pictures within its pages. The robust and masterful paintings of Mead Schaeffer were among them.
My own view is that as the materialist philosophy fermented out of the two world wars hand in glove with the emergent technologies the foundation stones of our aesthetic culture were systematically removed from under the feet of many talented souls. The declining quality of Shaeffer’s work I believe to be an example of this.
Well - none of your book have disappointed up to now , therefore I have ordered it!
Best Al
David,
I'm very pleased with the book. Congratulations, and thank you!
Chris,
Schaeffer himself - at least partially - explained his change in style; saying he was "sick of making stuff up" for his adventurous illustrations. That seems to indicate that he welcomed the change to current events, the grit of realism and homespun/american subjects.
Schaeffer's work, in my view, hit its peak between 1927 and 1934 (the first three illustrations in David's post fall within this time frame). Dozens and dozens of his images during this period are world-class, hall-of-fame level stuff.
By 1935, however, his work starts to feel stale, false and stiff, and gets dogmatically blocky. In my opinion, there was always lurking in Schaeffer's work a blocky stiffness that he only subdued/mastered during his peak period. Much of his early work has it. And his WWII work often had it. Partially it is do with his constructionist approach to figure drawing and structural form; part George Bridgman, part Dean Cornwell's 'chunky' stylistic influence, and partially, it seems, a nod to Art Deco.
Anyway, his late 'Regionalist' work - and the main magazine he worked for, The Saturday Evening Post, went 'Regionalist' on its covers, so he went too - seemed to be a good match for his slightly clunky tendencies. The genteel 'hokey' quality and subjects of the covers of this late 40s-50s era, sort of ask for a clunky, deadpan aesthetic attitude.
Kev,
Thanks for the extra info and your thoughts on Shaeffer’s artistic decline, I agree with your assessment of the time frame covering his peak period.
Shaeffer was certainly responding to the requirements of his paymasters, but their policies were in turn responding to the changing attitudes of the wider world, the materialist zeitgeist, and this could be partly responsible for Shaeffer's claim to be "sick of making stuff up". We will of course never know.
I think we would agree that materialism has a generally detrimental effect on the arts and that choices of magazine cover plays its part. But I’d say the most crucial influence is how the modernist philosophy can affect the existential well-being of an artist regardless of any commissions undertaken. When one doubts the very axioms upon which art is founded there is nothing to identify, assess and check bad habits. Accordingly Shaeffer’s 'clunky tendencies' were pardoned and released from the pen (IMO).
I actually like the composition of the last image, with the trolley bus tilting down over the prow of the hill, and the sailor in semi-silhouette against the pale gold of the distant city.
Does anyone know if Rockwell's similar scenes with the zoomed-out viewpoint of towns and small figures pre-date Schaeffer's ? who influenced who in this case ?
Laurence,
I think both Rockwell and Schaeffer were influenced by Stevan Dohanos. And Dohanos was, I think clearly, influenced by the Regionalist movement in the U.S. Thomas Hart Benton is the most well known figure in that movement, but there were many other including a Harvey Dunn student John Steuart Curry who was illustrating stories for the Saturday Evening Post in the 1920s.
I like that one too Laurence, for the same reason. The contrast of the cool foreground with the promise of an unknown golden future, which might, by the end of the night end in regrets and hangovers.:) That warm color really pulls the eye back into the picture space. Or are they all about to ship out? I'm not sure as some the sailors are holding bags and they have grabbed their pea coats. There looks like a ship down there waiting for them at the end of the street in the harbor.
The composition is nice and simple with everything related to the long axis of the street running all the way to the bay forming a long rectangular block (city block) with the ceiling open to the sky. If the boat is the destination, the narrative has a nice beginning, middle and end. The level floors of the row houses in the foreground really sets off the tilt of the street that supports the trolly on the cusp of its descent.
Congratulations on the book David! Another one under your belt.
Just google Schaeffer and I liked this quote, so true,
"He could use any model, and when he began using a camera, he felt his work suffered. “The camera has everything else, except what you want,” Schaeffer said. An emotional painter, he needed that “…something about a real person…” to inspire him."
https://www.illustrationhistory.org/artists/mead-schaeffer
I think we would agree that materialism has a generally detrimental effect on the arts and that choices of magazine cover plays its part. But I’d say the most crucial influence is how the modernist philosophy can affect the existential well-being of an artist regardless of any commissions undertaken. When one doubts the very axioms upon which art is founded there is nothing to identify, assess and check bad habits.
If I started listing all the factors that I think have a 'detrimental effect on the arts' I'd be writing all day.
I agree that meathead literalists - those with the hijacked dopamine systems who only think linearly and factually and "don't gimme none'o'that hifalutin truth and beauty business" - and the meathead primitivists - those who think life was only authentic prior to the invention of pants and "don't gimme none'o'that hifalutin truth and beauty business" - will ruin poetry given half a chance.
But I think the influence of anti-artistic philosophies, politics, and pseudo-intellectual cliques is only part of the issue. The main issue is social; times change. The prior zeitgeist becomes a flight risk when a bunch of jobs go missing. People go diving for moldly food in dumpsters; soon a whole era high-tails it out of Dodge. And a great many high personages and the horses they rode go from being toasted to roasted to ghosted in a fortnight.
The Great Depression was dire. And while it is true that movie ticket sales boomed during and circa, demonstrating that escapism was alive and well, there was also a very big movement to drop the fun and games and look the world in the eye. This was as much a necessity of the moment as an aesthetic sea change, the latter coming out of the former, I believe. Good art requires extended concentration and extended contemplation and extended rewards. In times of high anxiety, all we get is carnival food gussied up with chatty packaging.
Good art requires extended concentration and extended contemplation and extended rewards. In times of high anxiety, all we get is carnival food gussied up with chatty packaging.
I agree wholeheartedly with the first sentence but have reservations, perhaps strong ones, regarding the view expressed in the second sentence. A superficial temperament would generally react to such circumstances in the way you describe but not the authentic poetic mind. And this could be said of the qualitative spread of cultural productions during relatively untroubled times, the halcyon days. External uncertainties (and the anxiety it produces) can be a trigger to the reflective mind to look toward the human mind’s primary sense of meaningfulness because it is the only thing left standing. This has definitely happened to me during the insane global circumstances of this year.
My own take on the effect of "changing social times" (to paraphrase you) is this:
The philosophy of materialism and the post-modern relativism it engenders initially deconstructed the founding principles that gave society its existential context and thereby its cohesion - it provided it with a subject to work with so-to-speak. The next stage was to deconstruct this deconstruction and then to deconstruct that, and so on. This has had the effect of diluting the truths it plays with rather than eliminating them. Thus, like the pusher with only one consignment to live off, the pure stuff is continually cut with each transaction. This is all to say that I consider the issue to be one of eroding values rather than a reaction to difficult times.
As a topical example of what I mean; the 'black lives matter' lobby is to the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King what the scoffing of chocolate Easter eggs is to the resurrection of Christ.
Chris,
You seem to be leaving the question of Schaeffer's late stylistic turns behind, heading for deeper waters.
When you say 'materialism', do you mean Atheism? Marxism? Existentialism? Nihilism? Or do you mean a dismissive attitude toward basic values and virtues because they have no material nature? (truth, honor, honesty, faith, appreciation, grace, pride, quality, greatness, beauty, generosity, spirit, logical coherence, and so on.)
Kev,
I mean both. Both in that the dismissive attitudes to the virtues you listed are an outcome of materialist philosophies such as Atheism, Marxism, Existentialism and Nihilism.
Just to clarify my position a little further: If these values are believed to be pure societal constructs then we are left with the meaningfulness of subjectivity in itself, that is to say; everything is meaningless outside of subjectivity. As far as I can tell, meaning is perhaps akin to the promptings of intuition; its non-verbal message to us is quite distinct from how we choose to interpret it (intuition being born of primal instincts and interpretation born of our frontal lobe intellect) So when we believe meaning to be dependent on constructs any questions concerning value become the interpretation of the relativism of intellectual constructs. My understanding of language is that it is founded on the self-sustaining co-existence of subject and narrative and depends on both to exist. So getting back to the plastic arts we have abstractions about relativism replacing abstracting principles from the behaviour of intrinsic values. In the extreme case of abstract painting this is the abstraction of nothing. On a wider scale, replace 'abstraction' with the phrase 'context for a society' and we have what has been happening to western culture over the last hundred years or so.
Chris,
While I could go on and on about the destructive cultural effects of reductionist pseudo-scholarship and petulant political activism stemming from the academic 'intellectual' class (and those that aspire to get on board that market lifeboat), for me the question of Schaeffer's stylistic change comes from a more basic issue; how the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States changed the nature of the magazine business, as well as popular interests and sensibilities. Then World War Two modulated the arts and the public in another way, and then the postwar period following on did it again.
It seems to me that a great deal of iconoclasm (including the relativistic postmodernist rejection of basic values, norms, systems, categories, principles, and 'grand narratives') is just the manifestation of a kind of social and existential claustrophobia caused by intense cultural and personal stress (resulting in a concentration-destroying dopamine addiction.)
Joss wrote: "I imagine I'm not alone in valuing the first one highly the latter seems so lacking in vitality by comparison.... The latter work looks like a highly competent Rockwell wannabe."
As you can see from the other comments, you aren't alone in preferring Schaeffer's earlier work. Schaeffer was able to receive some of his later assignments from the Saturday Evening Post by working closer to Rockwell's style-- the Post wanted more covers from Rockwell than he was able to generate, so they pressured other illustrators to work in that style. But the relationship between Rockwell and Schaeffer was very close and very complex. They were next door neighbors in Vermont who compared works in progress, discussed art and socialized together. They used each other's families for models. It used to drive Rockwell nuts that Schaeffer worked so much faster than Rockwell. It's an interesting story.
chris bennett-- Yes, I love that Ermoyan book too. Arpi just passed away recently. She was a wonderful force in American illustration. I think the reasons for Schaeffer's "decline" are a little more difficult to chart than that. I think his earlier illustrated books (Typee, Omoo) when he was making a living as a cheaper, faster version of N.C. Wyeth, weren't very impressive. Then by the mid to late 1920s he really took some initiative and created some wonderful, painterly work. Yes, by the late 1930s the factors that you describe influenced styles. But another element was the beginning of WW II. People lost their interest in fanciful costume stories and began thinking in more sober, realistic terms.
Anonymous / Al-- I'm not sure which "Al" you are, but that's very nice of you to say, thank you. I hope you enjoy this one. A book about Schaeffer was long overdue, and it didn't seem like anyone else was going to write one. Please let me know how you like it.
kev ferrara-- I agree with you about Schaeffer's high water mark. Certainly by the time of Tom Cringle's Log (1927) Schaeffer had established himself as a major talent. I find it interesting that Dean Cornwell had a similar peak period-- beginning a little earlier, say around 1921-- but he too grew out of it, so that by the late 1930s he was doing work I'd say was was quite inferior to his earlier efforts. Should we attribute such a decline to changing audience taste as well? The influence of Brangwyn? His interest in doing murals?
I would also add in defense of Schaeffer that I think some of his later work-- that art deco/noir period he went through in the late '30s early '40s-- could be quite strong. (But admittedly not as good as the period you describe as his peak).
chris bennett-- On the one hand, Schaeffer did indeed say he was "sick of making things up." On the other hand, more than any other illustrator I can think of, Schaffer insisted on traveling to the locations described in those fanciful stories so that he could see the light and smell the smells. He traveled to Paris to plan his paintings for Les Miserables and to the south seas for his illustrations for the Melville stories. So obviously accuracy meant something to him.
I think both Schaeffer and Rockwell came under pressure from Ken Stuart, the art director of the Saturday Evening Post, to rely more on photography and other modern conveniences. Some of Schaeffer's paintings that relied most heavily on photography were farthest from that "clunky" style. I'm not a big fan of Stuart's, but I note that Leyendecker-- another giant whose peak period was behind him-- could not adapt to modernity and could no longer find work when the 40s rolled around.
Laurence John-- I was surprised by how closely Schaeffer and Rockwell compared notes. At 5:00 they would get together and have cocktails under a shady tree and discuss the day's progress. Rockwell said, "In Arlington Schaeffer and I became fast friends. We helped each other take photographs, we criticized each other’s pictures, talked about art, inspired each other. We were going to bring back the golden age of illustration, the glorious days of Howard Pyle, Remington, Abby. This friendship with Schaeffer--a working illustrator, someone who shared my ideals, understood my problems--stimulated me." With that kind of give and take over years, it's hard to say who was the greater influence on the other. (Of course, Schaeffer's wife nearly banished Rockwell from the house after he used Schaeffer's daughter as a model for a Post cover and inadvertently revealed her address:https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/11/art-post-rockwell-cover-led-marriage/ )
Kev Ferrara wrote: "I think both Rockwell and Schaeffer were influenced by Stevan Dohanos."
This answer surprises me, as I think of Dohanos as a hard realist lacking the poetry of Rockwell, Schaeffer or the other greats. I can see why Ken Stuart liked his work for covers of the Post, but it's difficult for me to believe that Rockwell or Schaeffer were particularly impressed with his color or his composition. Can you elaborate?
Tom-- Many thanks. Yes, I agree that's a nice cover and I didn't mean to suggest that Schaeffer never did a decent painting again after his style changed. Some of his later paintings for the Post were quite strong. Jeffrey Catherine Jones once said that he thought Schaeffer had gone from being an excellent painter to being a bad painter, until Jones had the opportunity to go back and evaluate Schaeffer's later work with a more mature eye.
Kev Ferrara-- You have to admit that the invention of pants did end some of the immediacy and sincerity of art (let alone transparency).
I would go farther than Chris (I think) in challenging kev's assertion that "Good art requires extended concentration and extended contemplation and extended rewards. In times of high anxiety, all we get is carnival food gussied up with chatty packaging."
As we've discussed before on this blog, "times of high anxiety" include the golden age of Athenian art and the Italian renaissance. Anxiety seems to have made artists such as Goya, Bruegel and Kollwitz more earnest and sincere. The absence of a stable society seems to have caused them to focus on bigger, more important issues.
David,
I'm looking through The Covers of The Saturday Evening Post (Jan Cohn) to see if I can support what I've said about Dohanos' Regionalist influence on Rockwell and Schaeffer, and I think I need to amend the point slightly, to make it broader.
While Rockwell and Schaeffer were illustrating the second world war, a host of artists working in the Regionalist style, including Dohanos, began doing SEP covers. In late 1943... Andrew Wyeth, Robert Riggs, Dohanos, and John Atherton ... in early 1944, Dohanos, John Falter, Atherton and a few others.
Now, in the meantime Rockwell's March 4, 1944 cover is a classic vignette style Rockwell. And the next week (March 11) is a classic Mead Schaeffer war image in his gritty realistic style.
Interesting to note Rockwell's neatly lettered signature on the March 4 cover and Schaeffer's neatly-lettered signature the next week. When compared to Dohanos' homey script signatures.
I mention this because Rockwell begins using, on and off, a homey scriptface of his own soon after. And Mead Schaeffer (December 30, 1944) switches to a homey scriptface himself and suddenly shifts, too, with a goofy homespun subject. Followed by his classic December 30 cover, which signals his decisive shift toward Regionalism.
Rockwell begins bending his style heavily toward Falter's with the December 23 1944 cover. And Schaeffer's February 17, 1945 cover is pretty much the same style.
So I'd amend my statement to assert that the work of both Dohanos and Falter in this wartime period influences not only the look and feel of the post but also changes Rockwell and Schaeffer's styles and outlook.
I'm sure Grandma Moses had something to do with it too.
In times of high anxiety, all we get is carnival food gussied up with chatty packaging."
My meaning here did not come through. I was speaking of the individual artist unable to concentrate because of the anxiety of a difficult time, and thus not producing deep, reflective work. Rather, producing instead, hasty, strained work. Which may be expressive on its surface of the agitation of the moment, but not at its core.
An artist that keeps poise during 'interesting times' can of course produce great work just as in docile times.
Kev,
...for me the question of Schaeffer's stylistic change comes from a more basic issue; how the Great Depression of the 1930s in the United States changed the nature of the magazine business, as well as popular interests and sensibilities.
I will bow to your far greater knowledge of the illustration history and the part magazines of the time played within it and of course, my being an Englishman means I do not have the same handle on the cultural effects of the economic disaster that befell America during that time.
David,
Yes, I love that Ermoyan book too. Arpi just passed away recently. She was a wonderful force in American illustration.
My former self that bought this book all those years back would be chuffed to bits that its latter self is exchanging thoughts with someone who has been, in many cases, directly involved with those marvelous, almost mythical, artists across the pond. And thank you for the extra details concerning Shaeffer's career.
Kev and David, thanks for the replies to my query.
David: "This answer surprises me, as I think of Dohanos as a hard realist lacking the poetry of Rockwell, Schaeffer or the other greats"
I agree they have a different style, but my question was specifically about "the zoomed-out viewpoint of towns and figures" rather than other stylistic elements.
This Rockwell cover always struck me as an oddity:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKz7EhRXcAAcLbG.jpg
He's flattened the background so much that it looks like a mural on a wall rather than a 3-D space. The roads between the houses in particular are just completely unbelievable. His own attempt to integrate 'naive' or 'folk' art into his own style perhaps ?
Well Laurence, it's better than Lowery. :) ;)
This Rockwell cover always struck me as an oddity:
Laurence,
See John Falter's cover from two years prior:
https://www.pulpfest.com/2015/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Saturday-Evening-Post-44-08-05.jpg
And John Atherton's cover from two years prior:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/iuIAAMXQVT9Sq33v/s-l640.jpg
Add 'em together. Or just combine Grandma Moses and a wicker basket.
The regionalist thing is a deliberately naive, folsky, homespun Americana style. The amount of 'country' in the United States is staggering; small town porches and corn fields and farm products drying in the sun.
David,
I was suprised to hear you call Dohanos a 'hard realist.' His work seems very fanciful and droll to me; soft and silly. Although full of 'realistic details' for sure.
Kev, i can definitely see some Grandma Moses in the Rockwell background.
Did anyone else think of this Bruegel when looking at the 2nd last image in David's post ? ...
https://www.arthipo.com/image/cache/catalog/artists-painters/p/pieter-bruegel/pibru41-Pieter-Bruegel-the-Hunters-in-the-Snow-Winter-1000x1000.jpg
Nope, not me.
But since you mention it Laurence , have you seen the 'home movie' sequence between Kris and Hari in Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Solaris? it's a favourite of mine.
Chris, I saw Solaris years ago but can't recall that particular sequence. Is it a homage to the Bruegel ?
Should we attribute (Cornwell's) decline to changing audience taste as well? The influence of Brangwyn? His interest in doing murals?
Cornwell said that an illustrator can only have a brief period on top. I can't remember whether he said 3 years or 6 years, but it was a small number. After 1926 or so, Cornwell had already had his time on top, and he was putting the bulk of his time into becoming a muralist and doing mural work, only popping back in to do mainstream illustration work here and there to keep his boats afloat. Meanwhile, Schaeffer, Tepper and Content were picking up the 'Cornwell School' slack.
I think Cornwell's concerns clearly change from the Brandywine mode to the Brangwyn mode in his illustration work from 1924 to 1930. But without him putting his every ounce of effort into his illustrations (I'm sure you're familiar with his quote about the necessity of full committment) at the end of the decade, those concerns only get a superficial airing in the slicks.
As well, Dean Cornwell's lecture notes of the 1930s place a stern emphasis on the idea that the illustrator should develop a style wholly distinct from what a camera could do, in order that they not be, in fact, replaceable by a camera. I think this idea led Cornwell somewhat astray in his illustrations, especially as he was just blasting them out in order to get back to his muralizing.
Even somewhat puffy and cartoony, I think, in particular, Cornwell's Captain Blood illustrations from the period are astonishing.
Laurence,
I've just checked and it is in fact the 'levitation scene' where the couple are weightless for the short duration of the space station orbital maneuver and the Bruegel, which we see Hari looking at moments before in an attempt to become human, moves in and out of shot as the couple are literally swept off their feet in an achingly brief moment of loving epiphany before her attempted suicide.
Here is the scene with the weightless episode staring just after the 3 minute mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcglyhUre4w
David -- is there a way I can buy a signed copy from you?
Cheers
Interesting volume that is selling out fast - it's fun for the reader to compare and decide which art is more rewarding (or are they equally impressive?): pre-1940 or post-1940?
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