"Christ with Sainted Knights"   Lot no. 4315

Add to Want List


By Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951)

1900s
30.25" x 20.00"
Oil on Canvas
Signed Lower Right

REQUEST PRICE


PURCHASE REQUEST

Click the image above for an additional view.



J. C. Leyendecker’s illustrations and advertisements fueled a collective visual memory for the early 20th century American public. Over the course of his career, Leyendecker created 322 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, as well as numerous other magazines, including Collier’s and Ladies’ Home Journal. The only illustrator to eclipse his fame was Norman Rockwell and Rockwell was quick to credit Leyendecker as his mentor and inspiration.

 

This is an early work by Leyendecker, dating to circa 1900. The sinuous reddish orange flames emitted by the slain dragon recall the steam and vapors found in his later work, including an advertisement for Ivory Soap and a Thanksgiving cover for The Saturday Evening Post. The chiseled features and elegant expressions of the two knights and Christ are similar to those of his many successful advertising campaigns and illustrations. The inclusion of columns and the decorative border also are seen in works ranging from the 1901 Thanksgiving edition cover of Success magazine to the 1931 “Queen of Spring” cover for The Saturday Evening Post. This style of monogram relates directly to those used for a 1924 The Saturday Evening Post cover (Thanksgiving, November 29, 1924) and a 1905 illustration for Century Magazine, titled "Senator of Rome." Mr. Kent Steine, a classically trained illustrator and author of The J. C. Leyendecker Collection, believes that this painting could be from a series of sixty paintings Leyendecker completed for an edition of the Bible in 1893.



Explore related art collections: Religous / $100,000 & Above

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