Joseph Christian Leyendecker
The Inland Printer
1897

Name: The Inland Printer
Brand: Joseph Christian Leyendecker
Price: 12000 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Medium: Pen, Ink, and Wash Details over Printed Background Signature: Printed Signature in Image, Right. Opening page for the July 1897 isssue of The Inland Printer To celebrate Independence Day for the July cover, Leyendecker portrayed a young child squatting to light firecrackers. This opening page headpiece shows the boy and his dog among a small audience watching them explode from within a barrel, its hoops and staves shooting apart. Leyendecker utilized lithographic stippling in the background in both the cover image and this headpiece to provide depth and spatial composition. Medium: Pen, ink, and wash details over printed background Signature: Printed signature in image, right. Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in Montabaur, Germany, and came to America at the age of eight. Showing an early interest in painting, he got his first job at 16 in a Chicago engraving house on the strength of some larger pictures he had painted on kitchen oilcloth. In the evenings after work, he studied under Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute, and saved for five years to be able to go to France and attend the Academie Julian in Paris. Upon his return, as a thoroughly trained artist with immense technical facility, Leyendecker had no difficulty in obtaining top commissions for advertising illustrations and cover designs for the leading publications. His first Post cover was done in 1899, and he did well over 300 more during the next 40 years. Among the most famous of these was his annual New Years Baby series. His advertising illustrations made his clients famous. The Arrow Collar Man was a byword for the debonair, handsome male, and women wrote thousands of love letters to him in care of Cluett Peabody & Company. His illustrations for Kuppenheimer Clothes were equally successful in promoting an image of suited elegance. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1977. A major retrospective exhibition of Leyendecker's work was mounted at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1997-98.

Creator:

Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874 - 1951, American)

Creation Year:

1897

Dimensions:

Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 15.125 in (38.42 cm)

Medium:

Pen,Ink

Period:

1890-1899

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Fort Washington, PA

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU38431056733

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Joseph Christian Leyendecker

Joseph Christian "J.C." Leyendecker was born in Germany in 1874. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1882. His eldest brother, Adolph, became a prominent stained glass artist, and Joe, as he was called, had an early artistic calling.

After studying at the Chicago Art Institute under John H. Vanderpoel, J.C. Leyendecker enrolled at the Académie Julien in 1896, where he studied for a year with his younger brother Frank in the Beaux-Arts tradition. During his time there, he was exposed to and influenced by the works of Art Nouveau painters and printmakers Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret and Alphonse Mucha, with whom he formed a strong friendship. The next year, he staged his first one-man exhibition at the Salon du Champ-de-Mars and made the auspicious acquaintance of Paul Gauguin.

In 1898, Leyendecker produced the first of 48 covers for Collier’s magazine. The next year, he painted his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post magazine, which was the beginning of a 44-year association with that esteemed publication. Throughout his career, he would also paint covers for Life magazine, illustrations for a library of books, and transform advertising for such companies as B. Kuppenheimer & Co. and Interwoven Socks. His work for Arrow Shirt is the most well-known and beloved.

Using his lover and manager, Charles Beach, as a model, Leyendecker created the ultimate image of modern American masculinity. His work for Kuppenheimer, also known as the House of Kuppenheimer, is just as iconic. Founded in 1876, the company became the manufacturer of uniforms for the United States Army during World War I. Thanks to Leyendecker's advertising, the firm became synonymous with the ultimate in male taste and desirability.

Unfortunately, near the end of his career, as Leyendecker’s associations with Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post came to an end, his work fell into obscurity. When he died in 1951, his great friend Norman Rockwell, who commemorated their relationship in his painting Waiting for the Art Editor, served as one of his pallbearers.

Find original J.C. Leyendecker prints and paintings on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by M.S. Rau)