"Dionne Quintuplets - Calendar Illustration" Lot no. 329
By Andrew Loomis (1892-1959)
1937 (Estimated)
Sight 35.5." x 42.5", Framed 44.00" x 51.25."
Oil on Canvas
Signed Lower Right
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Image of the Dionne quintuplets.
Calendar Illustration & Palmolive Soap Advertisement
Beginning when they were toddlers, American illustrator, Andrew Loomis, painted a portrait of the famed quintuplets every year until they were 21 years old. The pictures appeared in magazines, and on billboards and calendars that hung in millions of homes. They usually depicted normal young girls’ activities, from playing with dolls, to sitting around a campfire.
The five sisters were born on May 28, 1934, in Collander, Ontario, Canada. When they were four months old, the world famous babies were taken from their family and made a ward of the King under the Dionne Quintuplets Guardian Act. The Canadian government used the girls as a tourist attraction, and thousands of visitors paid to see them everyday. In 1943, they were given back to their parents.
This painting was used as an advertisement for Palmolive Soap and appeared in many magazines.
Explore related art collections: Children / Calendar Art / Family / Humor / Fashion / $20,000 - $50,000
See all original artwork by Andrew Loomis
ABOUT THE ARTIST
As a youngster, William Andrew Loomis loved to draw pictures, but it was a visit to the nearby studio of Howard Chandler Christy that made him decide to seek for himself an artist’s career.
Loomis was born in Syracuse, New York, and grew up in Zanesville, Ohio. At 19, he went to New York to attend the Art Students League, where he studied under George Bridgman and Frank Vincent DuMond.
In 1915, he got a job in Chicago with the art organization of the Charles Daniel Frey; he also attended classes at the Chicago Art Institute. This was interrupted in 1917 when he enlisted in the Army and served 20 months, half of them in France.
After the war, Loomis returned to Chicago to work at the Charles Everett Johnson advertising art studio, then for Bertch and Cooper. He finally opened his own studio as a free-lance artist. Equally at home in either editorial or advertising illustration, Loomis had a long career in both and also painted many twenty-four-sheet poster advertisements.
This broad experience especially qualified him as a teacher at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Countless other art students who could not study with him personally benefited from his several art books, including Fun With a Pencil, Drawing for All It’s Worth, and Creative Illustration, published by The Viking Press. In 1999 Looms was inducted into the Society of Illustrators’ Hall of Fame.