"On a Bench, Woman's Home Companion interior illustration" Lot no. 4572
By Walter Biggs (1886-1968)
1935
19.5" x 28"
Watercolor, gouache, pencil, and charcoal on board
Signed and dated lower left: W Biggs 35
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Woman's Home Companion interior illustration, October 1935
Explore related art collections: Magazine Stories / 1930s / $5,000 - $20,000
See all original artwork by Walter Biggs
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Walter Biggs represented the South at its best, both as a gentleman and as an artist who painted the South with sensitive artistry and poetic nostalgia.
Biggs was born in Elliston, Virginia, and spent his boyhood there. He arrived in New York to study art at the Chase School, later renamed the New York School of Art. Among his teachers were Edward Penfield, Lucius Hitchcock and Robert Henri. Henri was an especially inspiring teacher who instilled in the students a real desire to work. Biggs was in an unusual class which included Clifton Webb, Eugene Speicher, Edward Hopper, George Bellows, Guy Pene Dubois, Rockwell Kent and W. T. Benda, all whom became famous in their respective ways.
Biggs himself became a famous illustrator and teacher at the Art Students League and the Grand Central School of Art in New York. His illustrations over the years appeared in Harper’s, Scribner’s, The Century, The Ladies’ Home Journal, Woman’s Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, McCall’s, and others.
He exhibited regularly at the National Academy, the Salmagundi Club, the American Watercolor Society and the Philadelphia Watercolor Society, winning many awards. In 1963, the Society of Illustrators elected him to the Hall of Fame, “For distinguished achievement in the art of illustration.” In 1986, the Virginia Watercolor Society arranged a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Biggs’s work at Roanoke College in Virginia.