"Study for Saturday Evening Post Cover"   Lot no. 4169

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By Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951)

1932
27.75" x 27.50"
Oil with Pencil on Canvas
Signed Monogram Lower Right
SOLD

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Study for Saturday Evening Post cover, Sep 3, 1932.

Monogram signature "JCLeyendecker" l.r., identified in an inscription from John A. Weatherwax on the reverse. John Weatherwax graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago and then became Art Director at Leo Burnett agency and President of the Art Director's Club of Chicago. He knew many of the leading arts figures of the time including László Moholy-Nagy, Frank Lloyd Wright, Carl Sandburg, Grant Wood, and Rockwell Kent. Later he relocated to California and served as Chairman of the Board of Weatherwax, Spurgeon, Heath, Borchell, a boutique advertising agency in Los Angeles. The lot is accompanied by color copies of a letter from the artist to John Weatherwax responding to Weatherwax's request for a signature and autograph for his collection, and copies of correspondence between John Weatherwax and Michael Schau, author of a monograph on J.C. Leyendecker published in 1974.



Explore related art collections: $50,000 - $100,000 / Studies / Beach/Summer / Family

See all original artwork by Joseph Christian Leyendecker

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in Montabaur, Germany, and came to America at the age of eight. Showing an early interest in painting, he got his first job at 16 in a Chicago engraving house on the strength of some larger pictures he had painted on kitchen oilcloth. In the evenings after work, he studied under Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute, and saved for five years to be able to go to France and attend the Academie Julian in Paris.

Upon his return, as a thoroughly trained artist with immense technical facility, Leyendecker had no difficulty in obtaining top commissions for advertising illustrations and cover designs for the leading publications. His first Post cover was done in 1899, and he did well over 300 more during the next 40 years. Among the most famous of these was his annual New Years Baby series.

His advertising illustrations made his clients famous. The Arrow Collar Man was a byword for the debonair, handsome male, and women wrote thousands of love letters to him in care of Cluett Peabody & Company. His illustrations for Kuppenheimer Clothes were equally successful in promoting an image of suited elegance. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1977.A major retrospective exhibition of Leyendecker's work was mounted at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1997-98.

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in Montabaur, Germany, and came to America at the age of eight. Showing an early interest in painting, he got his first job at 16 in a Chicago engraving house on the strength of some larger pictures he had painted on kitchen oilcloth. In the evenings after work, he studied under Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute, and saved for five years to be able to go to France and attend the Academie Julian in Paris.

Upon his return, as a thoroughly trained artist with immense technical facility, Leyendecker had no difficulty in obtaining top commissions for advertising illustrations and cover designs for the leading publications. His first Post cover was done in 1899, and he did well over 300 more during the next 40 years. Among the most famous of these was his annual New Years Baby series.

His advertising illustrations made his clients famous. The Arrow Collar Man was a byword for the debonair, handsome male, and women wrote thousands of love letters to him in care of Cluett Peabody & Company. His illustrations for Kuppenheimer Clothes were equally successful in promoting an image of suited elegance. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1977.A major retrospective exhibition of Leyendecker's work was mounted at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1997-98.


Kent Steine