"New Boyfriend, Saturday Evening Post Cover" Lot no. 3346
By John Philip Falter (1910-1982)
1949
28.00" x 26.00", Framed 36.00" x 33.50"
Oil on Canvas
Signed Lower Left
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Cover of The Saturday Evening Post, February 5, 1949
Label on back is Falter’s handwriting, his daughter said Curtis Publishing probably titled it “meeting the Date”. The Episcopal priest in the back room is Falter’s uncle; the other figures are not known.
The Post described, “The original idea here was to show a new boy friend undergoing a merciless inspection by the girl’s family. John Falter wound up doing an even more harrowing variation of the theme. The girl, the mother and the clerical brother are only too attentive to the swain, but most of the household resoundingly ignores him. Falter used as a setting the home of Sid Castles, in Geneva, Illinois. However, as artists will, he added wrinkles of his own, such as the picture in the center —an old chrome called The Tie That Binds. Falter says he saw this picture everywhere as a boy in Nebraska. As an adult, though, he has never been able to find anyone who ever heard of it.”
(The Saturday Evening Post, February 5, 1949, p. 3)
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See all original artwork by John Philip Falter
ABOUT THE ARTIST
John Philip Falter was born in Plattsmouth and reared in Falls City, Nebraska. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Art Students League in New York on a scholarship, and the Grand Central School of Art in New York. Among his teachers were Mahonri Young, George Wright and Monte Crews.
Falter began his career in illustration early, starting with the Pulps, and at 20, sold his first picture to Liberty, a “slick” paper magazine. Talented and prolific, he soon added most of the other major magazines, and many advertising agencies, to his roster of clients.
His most important pictures were painted for the covers of The Saturday Evening Post, and he produced more than 200 of them. Many were based on the experiences of his Nebraska boyhood, in small town and country settings. He also painted a notable series of detailed street scenes in cities across the United States. These grew out of a chance visit of a Post art editor to Falter’s studio; there a picture of Gramercy Park caught his eye, which Falter had painted for pleasure.
John served in the Navy as a Chief Boatswain’s Mate during World War II; later, he was commissioned a Lieutenant on special art assignments. Among other projects after the war, he illustrated over 40 books for Reader’s Digest and completed many portrait commissions, including those of Admiral Halsey, Louis Armstrong, Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney, Mrs. Clark Clifford, and tenor John Charles Thomas. He later painted an outstanding series of historical subjects for the Bicentennial, commissioned by the 3M Company in 1976.
Falter was a member of the Society of Illustrators, the Players, and the Philadelphia Sketch Club. In 1976, he was elected to the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame. Although he did not often exhibit, his paintings are in several museums.