Vintage Illustration - Discovering America's Calendar Artists 1900-1960
(1997 - Collector's Press)

[-BELOW THE LINE-] (by Rick & Charlotte Martin) I applaud the idea of gathering together & exhibiting the works of the quickly-being-forgotten artists of the incredible Calendar trade of this bygone era, but this book takes a major mis-step in deciding that presenting most of their art in black-&-white was better than nothing at all. That kneecaps this tome and, for our purposes, throws it off The List. So the statistics are that this 208-page book has only 39 fullsize color reproductions and another 13 pages of multiple color images pulled together. Admirably, the authors take each of the 14 featured artists and gives them a page of biography and art-overview and then, out of the pages of black-&-white images set aside for them, shows a color page or two. However, poor Phillip Goodwin gets no color whatsoever, and while 'L. Goddard' gets one such image, it isn't a featured large-reproduction. While most of the Calendar art preserved today is pin-up/female portraiture, you can see here that America's tastes were actually quite more diverse, showing alternate subjects like homespun life-&-industry in the outdoors, wildlife & landscape, light-fantasy settings, gardens, historical personages, children, babies, dogs and kittens. Everything is captioned with titles, painters & creation period. There is explication about the Calendar market & processes of the time, as well as an index to all the images & their artists. Those 'well-presented' are: Rolf Armstrong (4), Haskell Coffin (3), Bradshaw Crandell (3), Arthur Elsley (3), R. Atkinson Fox (3), F.R. Harper, Adelaide Hiebel (2), Hy Hintermeister (4), Carl Kahler, Zula Kenyon (2), Gene Pressler (6), Frank Stick (2), William Thompson (3), and C.K. VanNortwick (2).