Jessie Willcox Smith

Mother and Child, Golden Age of Illustration

1905 circa

Framed Cuban Artist/Caricaturist Conrado Walter Massaguer presents Hollywood star Adolphe Menjou in a satirical dual portrait. In the foreground, the subject is seen in a dapper top hat, tux, fashionable cigarette and boutonnière, and is shown as being the epitome of being stylishly debonair. To make a larger point about this subject, Massaguer paints a cast shadow of Menjou as a burning red devil who studies his alter ego from above. Keeping with the artist's sarcasm, we see the good and bad in one image. Works by Massaguer are rare and this work is in keeping with his signature style. This work was most likely done on assignment for Life Magazine, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker or Vanity Fair. Signed upper right. Inscribe lower right. Titled on verso. Unframed, Slight bend to board; toning to board; scattered faint foxing; pin point abrasions to margins, not affecting image. 19-1/2 x 15-1/8 inches board size. Conrado Walter Massaguer y Diaz was a Cuban artist, political satirist, and magazine publisher. He is considered a student of the Art Nouveau. He was the first caricaturist in the world to broadcast his art on television.He was first caricaturist to exhibit on Fifth Avenue. He was the first caricaturist in the world to exhibit his caricatures on wood. He, and his brother Oscar, were the first magazine publishers in the world to use photolithographic printing. Self portrait of Conrado Walter Massaguer, depicted on a carrousel ride, with the devil over his left shoulder and an angel over his right. (1945) He created the magazine Social with his brother Oscar to showcase Cuban artistic talent. The duo later created the magazine Carteles, which became for a period the most popular magazine in Cuba, which was purchased by Miguel Ángel Quevedo in 1953. In his life, he met and drew caricatures of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, the King of Spain, and many others.[ In sum total, he was the author of more than 28 thousand caricatures and drawings.Ernest Hemingway once had to refrain himself from punching Massaguer in the face after the artist drew an unflattering caricature of him. The dictator Gerardo Machado, however, did not punch Massaguer for his own unflattering caricature - he had the artist deported. He was one of the most internationally renowned Cuban artists of his day, and his art is still regularly featured in galleries across the Western Hemisphere and Europe. Early life Massaguer was born on October 18, 1889, in Cárdenas, Cuba.[In 1892, his family moved to Havana. When the Cuban War of Independence broke out, Massaguer's family escaped the country. From 1896 to 1908, he lived in Mérida, Mexico. However, during this time, his parents enrolled him in the New York Military Academy, where he stayed during school years. In 1905, after graduating the military academy, he briefly attended the San Fernando school in Havana, where he was tutored by Ricardo de la Torriente and Leopoldo Romañach. In 1906, less than a year later, he returned to the family home in Mexico. Career as artist Early career While living in Yucatán, Mexico, Massaguer published his first caricatures in local newspapers and magazines. These included La Campana, La Arcadia, and the Diario Yucateco. In 1908, he moved back to Havana. After returning to the island in 1908, Massaguer began mingling with Havana's aristocratic circles, forming close friendships with some of the city's most powerful and influential men, as well as winning the favor of many women who were quickly charmed by him. Massaguer, largely self-taught, honed his style using the avant-garde techniques he studied from the European and American magazines that were widely available in Cuba at the time. Cover of the immensely popular Cuban magazine El Figaro, drawn by Massaguer in 1909. This cover depicts two bumbling, incompetent American tourists to the island. He started drawing for El Fígaro, and was featured prominently on the cover in 1909. After two years of refining his craft, Havana announced a poster contest aimed at attracting North American tourists to stay in the city during the winter months. Notable figures like Leopoldo Romañach, Armando Menocal, Rodríguez Morey, Jaime Valls, and others also entered the competition. The jury was particularly impressed by the modern execution and creative solution of one piece, signed by Massaguer, who was relatively unknown at the time. The jury deliberations caused a great controversy.[5] The prize was ultimately awarded to the Galician painter Mariano Miguel, who had recently married the daughter of Nicolás Rivero, the wealthy owner of the conservative newspaper Diario de la Marina. Although Massaguer received only an honorable mention, the fraud scandal caused such an uproar that his name quickly entered the public spotlight, and he became an overnight sensation. In 1910, he became co-owner of the advertising agency Mercurio, with Laureano Rodríguez Castells. At Mercurio, he led the Susini cigar campaign, and earned substantial wealth. Massaguer has been described as a restless man, in both mind and body.After earning enough money from his art to begin traveling, he was almost always doing so. He constantly traveled between New York City and Havana, Mexico and France, Europe and the Americas. In 1911, his reputation among the Havana socialites solidified when he organized his own first public caricature exhibit, and also the first Caricature Salon ever held in the Americas, hosted at Athenaeum of Havana (the Ateneo), and the Círculo de La Habana. Other exhibitors here included Maribona, Riverón, Portell Vilá, Valer, Botet, Barsó, García Cabrera, Carlos Fernández, Rafael Blanco, and Hamilton de Grau. "Messaguer Visits Broadway." Caricatures of theatrical and literary figures. Elsie Janis, Raymond Hitchcock, S. Jay Kaufman (columnist), Ibanez, author of The Four Horsemen, and Frances White In 1912, in the New York American Journal, he published his first Broadway drawings. From 1913 to 1918, he was an editor for Gráfico. Social Main article: Social (magazine) Cover of the magazine Social, July 7, 1923 In 1916, he created the magazine Social with his brother, Oscar H. Massaguer. Social's contributors included Guillén Carpentier, Chacón y Calvo, Enrique José Varona and others.Social has been described as Massaguer's great love in the magazine industry, and was the property that historians say he cared the most about. Social was an innovative magazine, being the first magazine in the world to use a modern printing process called photolithographic printing. Social set cultural trends, not only in the fashion of Cuba, but in art, politics, and Cuban identity.[11] Social catered to a certain aesthetic in Cuba - that of the sophisticated elite socialite - but Massaguer would also use this magazine to ridicule and jibe against that same class of society when he found their personalities worthy of his contempt. In Social, readers could find a variety of content, including short stories, avant-garde poetry, art reviews, philosophical essays, and serialized novels, as well as articles on interior design, haute couture, and fashion. Occasionally, the magazine also featured reports on sports such as motor racing, rowing, tennis, and horse riding.The cultural promotion efforts of both Massaguer and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring are evident in the magazine. Notably, this period overlaps with their involvement in the Minorista Group, which was then at the forefront of the country's intellectual life.[5] Many contributors were devoted members of the group, leading some experts to consider Social as the cultural voice of the Minoristas. One of the features of Social magazine was its section called "Massa Girls," which was a play on his own name, and pronounced with a glottal 'g' in a similar fashion to the letter in Massaguer.[12] Massaguer drew women as independent and free-thinking, and never drew the woman celebrity as a caricature of herself, but as a free agent surrounded by caricatures.[11] However, Massaguer himself has been described as a womanizer in his personal life, and hesitant to fully embrace every facet of women's liberation. In 1916, he also established la Unión de Artes Gráficas and the advertising agency Kesevén Anuncios.[9] The art critic Bernardo González Barroa wrote: “Massaguer has solved the problem of working hard, living comfortably off what his art produces and not missing any artistic, sporting or social event. His broad, childish laugh, of a carefree individual who carries his luck hidden in a pocket, appears everywhere for the moment, disguising the pranks of pupils that lurk, mock and, finally, flash with satisfaction at finding the characteristic point after having analyzed a soul... Massaguer's personality is beginning to solidify now. He has been the best-known and most popular caricaturist for a long time, but his technique had not reached the security, the mastery of values that he presents in his latest works, which is very natural and explainable”[5] Carteles Main article: Carteles Cover of the magazine Carteles, November 29, 1931 In 1919, Massaguer and his brother created the magazine Carteles.[9] Carteles gained the widest circulation of any magazine in Latin America, and the most popular magazine in Cuba for a time, until that title was claimed by Revista Bohemia. Carteles remained in print until July 1960.This magazine showcased Cuban commerce, art, sports, and social life before the revolution. In 1924, Carteles took a more political turn, with articles criticizing Gerardo Machado's government. it became a prime example of the humor and graphic design employed by artists like Horacio Rodríguez Suria and Andrés García...

Annie French was part of the Glasgow Girls group of artists and illustrators who worked in a delicate, feminine, and detailed Art Nouveau and Pre-Raphaelite style. This work, "Flora," is masterfully rendered and decorated with sumptuous floral patterns in the most detailed way. It is signed twice in the upper right quadrant. The mat has a hand-painted decorative border. The work presents better in person, and the viewer can marvel at the minute detail. The Video is overexposed and light and not representative of color. Use still...

Historical late 19th century portrait of Hiram H. Hobbs, Foreman of the Grand Jury of San Francisco y Richard Langtry Partington (American, ...

Stately portrait of George Arliss by Ivan Opffer (Danish, 1897-1980). Mr. Arliss is depicted wearing his signature monocle, looking directly at the viewer. Although this piece appears to be done rapidly, there is a clear confidence in Opffer's work - he was an accomplished portrait artist - and the resemblance to the subject is unmistakable. George Arliss (born Augustus George Andrews; 10 April 1868 – 5 February 1946) was an English actor, author, playwright, and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award – which he won for his performance as Victorian-era British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli (1929) – as well as the earliest-born actor to win the honour. He specialized in successful biopics, such as Disraeli, Voltaire (1933), and Cardinal Richelieu (1935), as well as light comedies, which included The Millionaire (1931) and A Successful Calamity (1932). Signed and dated "Ivan Opffer 1934" in the lower right. Titled "Mr. Arliss" in the lower left. Presented in a new off-white mat with foamcore backing. Mat size: 22"H x 16"W Art size: 17.5"H x 12"W Ivan Opffer (Danish, 1897-1980) was born in Nyborg, Denmark, on June 4, 1897, to a family of Danish scholars and journalists. His brother was Emil Opffer, a Danish merchant seaman and journalist who was known for his relationship with American writer Hart Crane. Ivan was raised in Mexico City and New York, where his anarchist father was the editor of a radical Danish-language newspaper. His involvement in painting and drawing began at an early age. At a summer workshop, he met and studied drawing with Winslow Homer, then went on to study at the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League of New York. When the US entered World War I, Opffer was one of the members of the American Army Camouflage Corps, headed by Homer Saint-Gaudens (whose mother was a relative of Winslow Homer), the son of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. As a camoufleur, Opffer served with other artists and architects, some of whom became well-known, including Barry Faulkner, Sherry Edmundson Fry, Kimon Nicolaides, Robert Lawson, Abraham Rattner, Kerr Eby, and others. It was this same unit, while still in training in at Camp American University in Washington DC, that launched a camp newspaper called The Camoufleur. Only three issues were published before the unit’s deployment to France in late 1917. In the October 31 issue, a satirical portrait by Opffer of Homer Saint-Gaudens (titled “Our Boss”) was published on page 5. After the war, Opffer returned to New York, where he became known for his caricatures of leading Modern writers, among them James Joyce, Edgar Lee Masters, Siegfried Sassoon, George Bernard Shaw, Carl Sandburg, G.K. Chesterton, and Thomas Mann. In the years between the wars, Opffer married Betty à Beckett Chomley, and settled in Paris, where he was a student at the Academie Julliard. He also lived in London and Copenhagen, where his drawings were frequently published in newspapers and magazines. With the outbreak of World War II, he and his family returned to New York and lived in Greenwich Village. Among his friends in that era were William Butler Yeats, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald...