Indiana Illustrators in Puck and Life

More than a couple of Indiana illustrators did work for Puck, Judge, and the old Life humor magazines. Two of the earliest and most well known were Albert Levering (1869-1929) of Hope, Indiana, and Walter H. Gallaway (1870-1911) of Pendleton and Indianapolis. Following is some of their art.

Life, Auto Number, January 19, 1905, with cover art by Albert Levering. In addition to being an illustrator, Levering was a cartoonist. His training as an architect showed through in his precision and complete confidence in depicting buildings and machinery.

Levering may not have been right on the timing or appearance of the vehicles shown here, but he foresaw that horses would one day become pets rather than beasts of burden. Note the lap-horse held by the woman on the right. It probably won't be long before miniature horses are called "therapy animals" or "service animals" and that you'll find them sitting next to you on the plane.

Levering's cartoon portrait of Mark Twain, here used as the cover of a color insert in Life, July 13, 1905, became one of his more well-known works.

In the early 1900s, caricaturists often depicted well-known men as having big heads and little bodies. Here, with William Howard Taft, Levering did the opposite. The result is funny, though not very flattering to our heaviest of presidents.

You don't have to know who William Waldorf Astor was to gain some insight into his personality and character by way of Albert Levering's very devastating caricature from Life, 1905. 

One hundred years ago this season, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was in a bit of a pickle. His country was losing its war and he was only a few months away from abdicating his throne and fleeing to Holland. In 1905, Albert Levering caricatured him for Life, and though this portrait isn't as devastating as the one above of Astor, the artist nevertheless had his fun. Note "der Kaiser's" own self-portrait and book of poems. Note also the little cannon, which became a very big howitzer--Big Bertha--just a few years after this drawing was made. The Kaiser is just another example of how personal and psychological failings on a very individual level can have outsized effects on history and the rest of humanity. We are today still paying the price for those kinds of failings, one hundred years after the end of the Great War. 

Albert Levering was most active during the Progressive Era when trusts were seen as a great enemy and trust-busting was a favorite activity among politicians. Trusts, here disguised as corpulent girls (they're probably supposed to be caricatures of a real-life person but I don't know who that might have been) dance around a man (is he supposed to represent the public?) in a drawing captioned "A Maypolitical Party" (a somewhat clumsy pun on "Maypole Party"). The month for this issue of Puck is obvious, but I can't read the year. Sorry for the poor image. What we need, I think, is a complete and easily accessible, searchable, portable, and necessarily digital version of Puck for all to see.

Walt Gallaway did at least two covers for Puck, this one from June 26, 1901 . . .

And this one, from September 13, 1903. Note the very Hoosier-looking men with big bellies, big, unkempt beards, slouch hats, big boots, and baggy pants.

Text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Joseph Allen Minturn (1861-1943)

One hundred years ago today, on April 6, 1917, the United States, with its declaration of war on Germany, entered the Great War, what we now call the First World War or World War I. By the time of the armistice nineteen months later, more than 4.7 million men had answered the call to arms, and more than 110,000 had died in combat, of disease, and by other causes. One who served was Joseph Allen Minturn of Indianapolis, a lawyer, artist, and clubman remembered for being one of the oldest of the officers inducted into the U.S. Army for service in that long-ago war.

Joseph Allen Minturn, known as Joe, was born in Nelsonville, Ohio, on June 20, 1861, shortly after the start of the Civil War. He arrived in Indianapolis in the American centennial year of 1876 and graduated from Indianapolis High School in 1877. Minturn furthered his education at Pennsylvania Military Academy (now Widener University), where he studied civil engineering and chemistry and received his Ph.D. in 1880, and at the law school of Indiana University, completing his studies there in 1895. Minturn started a wood engraving business in Indianapolis in 1881, became a patent attorney in 1895, and was admitted to practice before U.S. Federal Court in 1895 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1910. In 1901, Minturn served in the Indiana State Legislature.

Just shy of his fifty-sixth birthday, Minturn enlisted in the U.S. Army in May 1917. In June, the army imposed an age limit of fifty-four for enlistees, and Minturn was discharged. He promptly went to Washington, D.C., and, after a month of lobbying, was reinstated and ordered to report to Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis in July 1917. As a newly minted second lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps, he was next stationed at Camp Zachary Taylor in Kentucky and began learning about landscape drawing, military draftsmanship, and the new art of camouflage. Service at Camp Sherman, in Minturn's native state of Ohio, followed.

In July 1918, Minturn went overseas with the 309th Engineers, 84th Division, and became an instructor in camouflage and military sketching at Army Infantry Specialists' School in Langres, France. He acted as an observer on the Meuse-Argonne and St. Mihiel fronts and served at General Headquarters in Chaumont. Minturn was promoted to first lieutenant in 1918, to captain in April 1919, and was discharged after two years of service in July 1919. He was then fifty-eight years old.

Once returned to civilian life, Joe Minturn continued in his career as an author and illustrator. He had earlier written Inventor's Friend, or Success with Patents (Indianapolis, 1893), Price-Regulation Under Patents (Indianapolis: Minturn & Woerner, 1916), and The Puritans: An Historical Poem of America, etc. (Noblesville, IN: Butler Printing House, 1917). His book The American Spirit (1921), with illustrations by himself and others, is an account of Minturn's service in the army. (1) Next came Brown County Ballads ([Indianapolis], 1928), Frances Slocum of Miami Lodge, etc. (Indianapolis: Globe Pub. Co., 1928), and finally Historical and Other Poems (Indianapolis: Globe Publishing Co., 1939). (2)

Joseph Minturn was married twice and had two daughters. He was a member of the Methodist Church, Knights of Pythias, Masonic Lodge, Scottish Rite, American Legion, Indiana Society of Mayflower Descendants, and Service Club of Indianapolis. (3) Most of the information here is from the book The Service Club of Indianapolis, 1920-1955, compiled by Howard C. Caldwell (1955). For many years, Minturn was the club's oldest member. He had a farm in Hamilton County, north of Indianapolis, and a cabin, called "Miami Lodge," in Brown County, well south of the city. There he carried on his hobby of painting. Minturn was also of course an engraver and illustrator, and he was lifelong friends with Indianapolis artist and art instructor William Forsyth (1854-1945).

Joseph Allen Minturn died on April 3, 1943, at age eighty-one, and was buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

Notes

(1) To see the book in its entirety, click on the link:

https://archive.org/details/americanspirit00mint

(2) The list of Minturn's books is from Ohio Authors and Their Books by William Coyle, editor (1962), and Indiana Authors and Their Books 1816-1916, by R.E. Banta, editor (1949), by way of the website Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry, here.

(3) Minturn, an amateur genealogist, was descended on his mother's side from John Howland and Elizabeth Tillie or Tilley of the original colony. In that descent, he was related to George W. Bush, Chevy Chase, Sarah Palin, and Ted Danson, among many, many others.

Joseph Allen Minturn (1861-1943), a photograph taken in January 1918 in Chaumont, France. Known as tallest man in his company at Fort Harrison, Minturn was best remembered by the men with whom he served for his age and for his snow-white thatch of hair.

Above, a number of illustrations from Minturn's book The American Spirit (1921).

Text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Indiana Pioneers-Transportation

Today the Hoosier State of Indiana enters its two-hundreth year, for on December 11, 1816, it was admitted to the Union as the nineteenth state. Of the forty-eight contiguous states, Indiana is the smallest located west of the Appalachians. Nonetheless, it has made outsized contributions to the nation's culture and history, being first, most, and only in many categories, including agriculture, military service, manufacturing, automobiles, aviation, space exploration, education, literature, and art.

Ours is a state of pioneers. Whether in a flatboat, covered wagon, airplane, or spacecraft, Hoosiers have led the way. In observance of Indiana's pioneering efforts in transportation, I offer a number of illustrations by an artist who was herself descended from Indiana pioneers, Clotilde Embree Funk (1893-1991) of Princeton.

Postscript: The New York Times has cited my biographical article on Clotilde Embree Funk. The Times' article is called "Draw, She Said," and the author is David W. Dunlap. Mr. Dunlap's article is dated December 9, 2015, and it includes a photograph of Clotilde. In her hand is what Rooster Cogburn would have called "a big horse pistol." Believe it or not, when the picture was taken in 1926, Clotilde was target shooting in the basement of the Times Tower.

Happy Bison-tennial, Indiana!

Text copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Ursula Koering (1921-1976)

According to the book Illustrators of Books for Young People by Martha E. Ward and Dorothy A. Marquardt (1970), Ursula Koering spent part of her childhood in Indiana. By my estimate, that makes her part Hoosier. If she would allow it, we would welcome her as all Hoosier.

Ursula A. Koering was born on December 22, 1921, in Vineland, New Jersey. She grew up on a small farm populated by "many dogs, cats, goats, pigs, pigeons, chickens, [and] even canaries and parakeets." Remembering her youth, Ursula wrote, "It seems to me that for years I drew only horses and more horses." Later the winner of many prizes, she collected her first for a drawing of Popeye even before she entered school. She made her first sale to Our Sunday Visitor, published in Huntington, Indiana.

Ursula came from an artistic family. Her father, Eustachius W. Koering, and her mother's father, Amour LeFevre, were glassblowers. Her grandfather, Louis Koering, was a wagon maker and wood carver. Ursula's mother, Mariette H. LeFevre Koering, was a native-born Hoosier and a painter. When Ursula was a child, Mariette began taking her to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for Saturday art classes. Ursula attended Sacred Heart Grade School and High School and later graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. 

Ursula Koering loved working in clay and took post-graduate classes in clay modeling and ceramics. Unfortunately, she found out there weren't many opportunities for a woman in the field of sculpture. Instead she became an illustrator, first with Jack and Jill magazine (which is today published in Indianapolis), later for publishers of children's books. Her greatest achievement as an artist is surely the more than 200 books she illustrated in her brief life. One of her first was Petar’s Treasure: They Came From Dalmatia by Clara Ingram Judson (1879-1960), a prolific author of children's books and an Indiana author of note.

A partial list of books illustrated by Ursula Koering:

• A Cabin for Crusoe by David Severn (pseudonym of David Unwin) (1943)
• Petar’s Treasure: They Came From Dalmatia by Clara Ingram Judson (1945)
• Slappy Hooper, the Wonderful Sign Painter by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy (1946)
• Trucks at Work by Mary Elting (1946)
• The Adventures of Winnie and Bly by Anne H. White (1947)
• Trains at Work (1947)
• The Trolley Car Family by Eleanor Clymer (1947)
• Wagon for Five by David Severn (pseudonym of David Unwin) (1947)
• Worzel Gummidge: The Scarecrow of Scatterbrook Farm by Barbara Bower (1947)
• Patch by Mary Elting and Margaret Gossett (1948)
• The Picture Story of the Philippines by Hester O'Neill (1948)
• Celia's Lighthouse by Anne Molloy (1949)
• The First Book of Indians by Benjamin Brewster (pseudonym of Mary Elting) (1950)
• The Picture Story of Alaska by Hester O'Neill (1951)
• The Picture Story of Norway by Hester O'Neill (1951)
• The First Book of Eskimoes by Benjamin Brewster (pseudonym of Mary Elting) (1952)
• The First Book of Negroes by Langston Hughes (1952) 
• The Picture Story of Denmark by Hester O'Neill (1952)
• Shaken Days by Marion Garthwaite (1952)
• This Boy Cody and His Friends by Leon Wilson (1952)
• Red Sails on the James by Leone Adelson (1953)
• Machines at Work (1953)
• Peanut Butter Mascot by Helen D. Olds (1953)
• Rosemary's Secret by Irmengarde Eberle (1958)
• Antelope Singer by Ruth M. Underhill (1961)
• The Loner (1963)
• Mystery at Squaw Peak by William D. Hayes (1965)
• Spacecraft at Work by Mary Elting (1965)
• A Place by the Fire by William MacKellar (1967)
• The Long Year by Ester Wier (1969)
• Wilderness Winter by Mary Wolfe Thompson (1969)

Ursula's favorite subjects were people in costume, "any kind of costume, from caveman days up to the nineteen hundreds; and animals, any kind of animals." For The Picture Story of Norway, she and the author, Hester O'Neill, went to Norway and "traveled up and down fjords, climbed mountains, walked in the snow in June, and saw the midnight sun." Ursula later created coin faces for the Franklin Mint. She also taught at the Villa Rosella and the School of Industrial Arts and drew editorial cartoons for her local paper. 

"I hope I may always be able to illustrate books for children," she wrote for More Junior Authors, "and I hope boys and girls will always like to see my drawings." My hope is that children still love books as we all do when we are young and that Ursula Koering's books will always be available to young readers.

Ursula A. Koering died on December 22, 1976, her fifty-fifth birthday. Her mother remembered: "There was nothing that she could not do. But now, her beautiful hands are at rest."

Notes
Quotes are from More Junior Authors, edited by Muriel Fuller (1963) and Something About the Author, edited by Donna Olendorf, Vol. 64 (1991). There is a small collection of Ursula Koering's papers at the University of Minnesota Libraries Children's Literature Research Collections.

Ursula Koering got her start as an illustrator with Jack and Jill. Here's an illustration for "The Bulls of Altamira," an article by Ursula for Jack and Jill from many years later (March 1969). 

Here is a two-page spread--a fascinating picture--from one of her first books, Trucks at Work by Mary Elting (1945). From a website called "We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie" by Ariel S. Winter.

Ursula A. Koering

"She was tall, blond, so graceful. She walked like a ballerina. Salesgirls asked me [her mother] if she was a model."

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Sanford Tousey (1883-1961)

Thomas Sanford Tousey was born on May 28, 1883, into the wild and wooly West, into a world full of cowboys and Indians, horses and horsemen, and gents who sported big whiskers and carried pistols in their hip pockets. Growing up on a thoroughbred ranch in east Kansas must have been exciting for the future artist, but when Tousey was just eight years old, his family gave up life in the West and moved to Indiana. Throughout his childhood, Tousey returned to his great-grandfather’s ranch near the Potawatami Indian Reservation, to relive the Western way of life he had left behind. He later recounted his experiences in his first children’s book, Cowboy Tommy (1932).

Sanford Tousey (as he came to call himself) graduated from high school in Anderson, Indiana, in 1902.  For two years prior, he had earned seven dollars and fifty cents per week drawing daily chalk-plate cartoons for the Anderson Morning Herald. Most of that income went towards schooling at the Art Institute of Chicago under J.C. Leyendecker (1874-1951) and Frederic William Goudy (1865-1941). After that, Tousey went further east, to Wilmington, Delaware, for studies under Howard Pyle (1853-1911), and to the Art Students League in New York. He finished art school in Paris and before long settled into a career as a freelance illustrator and cartoonist in New York. For the next twenty years or so, he made sales to leading popular magazines, including Ballyhoo, Collier’s, Harper’s, Judge, Liberty, Life, Puck, The Saturday Evening Post, and Scribner’s.

During the early 1930s, Tousey gave up freelancing and turned to writing and illustrating children’s books. Over forty titles followed the publication of Cowboy Tommy in 1932, most involving cowboys, Indians, horses, and the Old West. Tousey became one of the bestselling children’s book authors of his day. In addition to authoring and illustrating a series of biographies of famed westerners such as Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and Jim Bridger, Tousey illustrated books by others, including Boy on Horseback (1935) by Lincoln Steffens.

Tousey retired in the mid-1950s and died on June 28, 1961, at his home in Monroe, New York. His papers are at the University of Kansas.

Books by Sanford Tousey and Illustrated by Sanford Tousey

Cowboy Tommy: The Story of a Boy's Adventures on a Ranch (1932)

Cowboy Tommy's Roundup (1934)

Boy on Horseback by Lincoln Steffens (1935)

Cowboy Jimmy (1935)

Steamboat Billy (1935)

On the Golden Trail (1936)

Chinky, the Banker Pony (1937)

Jerry and the Pony Express (1937)

Whistling Bill by Florence Romaine (1937)

Chinky Joins the Circus (1938)

Daniel Boone (1939)

The Shining Mountains by Lulita Crawford Pritchett (1939)

Indians of the Plains (1940)

Stagecoach Sam (1940)

Bob and the Railroad (1941)

Ned and the Rustlers (1941, 1945)

The Northwest Mounted Police (1941)

Val Rides the Oregon Trail (1941)

Airplane Andy (1942)
Cowboys of America (1942)

Old Blue, the Cow Pony (1942, 1945)

Pack Jack Trail by Addison Talbott (1942)

Dick and the Canal Boat (1943)

Little Bear's Pinto Pony (1943)

Fred and Brown Beaver Ride the River (1944)

Trouble in the Gulch (1944)

Lumberjack Bill (1946)

Tinker Tim (1946)

Treasure Cave (1946)

Bill and the Circus (1947)

Jack Finds Gold (1947)

Davy Crockett, Hero of the Alamo (1948)

Indians and Cowboys (1948)

Kit Carson, American Scout (1949)

Toby Has a Dog by May Justus (1949)

Horseman Hal (1950)

A Pony for the Boys (1950)

Bill Clark, American Explorer (1951)

The Twin Calves (1951)

White Prince, the Arabian Horse (1951)

Cub Scout (1952)

Jim Bridger, American Frontiersman (1952)

Wild Bill Hickok, Frontier Marshal (1952)

John C. Fremont, Western Pathfinder (date unknown)

In his middle age, Tousey returned to the world of his youth, away from high society and automobiles and to the Old West. Cowboy Tommy (1932) was his first book for children. Cowboy Jimmy (1935), shown here, followed close on its heels. More than three dozen books on cowboys, horses, Indians, and explorers followed over the next two decades. If Tousey is remembered today, it is for his books for children.

Before The New Yorker came along in the 1920s, magazine cartoons typically looked like this drawing by Sanford Tousey, from Judge, circa 1910. Take away the caption (and the fanciful element) and this cartoon could be an illustration for a short story.

Puck, Judge, and Life--the three great humor magazines of the time--were published in New York for a big-city, East-Coast crowd. Class and money were frequent topics of the cartoons and illustrations they published. So was new technology. Sanford Tousey specialized in depicting the automobile and the comic aspects of early motoring, as in this cartoon, also from Judge, also from about 1910.

Revision (March 31, 2021): A photograph of Sanford Tousey, the first I have ever seen. This is from Judge, August 25, 1917. Thanks to Alex Jay for providing the link.

Revised and updated on July 25, 2020.

Text copyright 2010, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Roy Frederic Heinrich (1881-1943)

Roy Frederic Heinrich was born on April 6, 1881, in Goshen, Indiana, and grew up in New York State. He studied at the Connecticut Art Students League under Charles Noel Flagg (1873-1938) and Robert Bolling Brandegee (1849-1922) and landed his first job as an artist with a Sunday newspaper. In 1910 and from a studio in Detroit, Heinrich began illustrating automobile advertisements for Graham-Paige, Hudson, Packard, Ford, Chevrolet, Buick, Dodge, Chrysler, and Cadillac, making him among the earliest artists in his field. He worked for other advertising clients as well, including General Electric, Zenith Carburetor Company, and Guardian Trust Company. Heinrich enjoyed most a series of one hundred historical illustrations of life in Vermont, created for and published in book form by the National Life Insurance Company of Montpelier. These drawings went on display in New York and New England and were a highlight of the Vermont building at the New York World’s Fair in 1939-1940. Among his memberships were the Society of Illustrators and the Art Directors Club. Heinrich and his wife, Ruth L. Heinrich, were married in 1929. Heinrich died on December 15, 1943, in Manhattan and was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York.

Roy Frederic Heinrich may have created straightforward black-and-white drawings of automobiles, as this advertisement for General Motors trucks shows. . .

. . . but he was no stranger to color, the conceptual approach, or depictions of the human form.

Heinrich worked during the heyday of art deco advertising and illustration. You would hardly guess that this is an ad for Holland Vaporaire Heating.

An effective two-color advertisement combining a mythological figure and modern technology, an art deco image and up-to-date advertising copy.

Text copyright 2010, 2024 Terence E. Hanley