Airplanes

At the fin de siècle, artists in popular magazines tried to visualize life in the twentieth century. Albert Levering (1869-1929), trained as an architect but with the mind of a cartoonist, excelled at humorous depictions of the future. This drawing appeared on the back cover of Puck, the humor magazine, on October 7, 1908.

Lucille Webster Holling (1900-1989) may not have been as well known as her husband (children's book author and illustrator Holling Clancy Holling), but as this travel poster shows, she was a talented artist in her own right. (Update, June 11, 2014: This image is not in fact a travel poster but an illustration from Kimo: The Whistling Boy by Alice Cooper Bailey (1928). You can read more about the artist here.)

Frederick Coffay Yohn (1875-1933) began his career as an illustrator of historical scenes for slick magazines such as Scribner's. Near the end, he painted pictures like this one for pulp magazines.

"Gretta" was Joseph Clemens Gretter (1904-1988), an illustrator of children's books, including Wing for Wing by Thomas Burtis (1932). Here are the endpapers for the book.

The cover of Adventure magazine from November 1911, created by Charles Buckles Falls (1874-1960?).

Justin Gruelle (1889-1978) painted his "Early Birds Mural" in the early 1940s. After many travels and travails, the mural has finally come to rest at the Indiana Historical Society in the artist's birthplace of Indianapolis.

Captions copyright 2010 Terence E. Hanley