"Coming Up Roses"   Lot no. 3926

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By George Hughes (1907-1990)

1957
22.00" x 20.25"; Framed 24.50" x 26.50"
Oil on Masonite
Signed Lower Left: Hughes

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Original cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, June 8, 1957.

 

The Post described, “It is so stimulating to see a child exert his psychological freedom and earnestly devote himself to creative self-expression. Johnny is creating a place to grow more geraniums. Given more time, he might also move all those loose sidewalk bricks onto the lawn and create a pretty red mountain. Maybe he’s too young to turn on the hose and squirt a brook downstairs to help mommy with her wash—but never underestimate the physical and imaginative powers of a little one. Anyway, mother has come, seen, and been stimulated, and John had better retire to his orthodox playing devices at the double-quick…. George Hughes’ father, George Sr., used to have a back yard like that in Brooklyn; the son, when he was a child, never dug up geraniums, but he turned out creative in spite of it.”

 

(The Saturday Evening Post, June 8, 1957, p. 3)



Explore related art collections: 1950s / Family / Children / Saturday Evening Post Covers / Humor / $100,000 & Above

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ABOUT THE ARTIST

 

A native New Yorker, George Hughes studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy of Design. Some of his early work included fashion drawing, and there was a stint as a special designer in the automobile field in Detroit.

   For many years, Hughes was one of the most prolific painters of Saturday Evening Post covers; in addition, he painted many editorial illustrations for the Post and other publications, including McCall’s, Woman’s Day, American Magazine, Reader’s Digest, and Cosmopolitan magazines.

   Hughes was one of the originators and masters of the “sitcom” magazine cover, and through his efforts, readers would spend minutes rather than seconds looking at the covers.

   Also a painter, he exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Detroit Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. In recent years he restricted his work to portraiture.