Esther Friend (1907-1991)

Illustrator, commercial artist, ceramist, printmaker, and fine artist Esther Friend was born in Hinsdale, Illinois, in 1907. She began her professional career at age twelve when she created a Christmas poster for a neighborhood dry goods store for the grand sum of $2. At fourteen, she started work with a commercial art and advertising agency washing brushes. In exchange for her labor, she received not pay but instruction in drawing and illustration. Esther also attended the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Vogue School and spent a year studying art in Paris.

Esther Friend worked as a commercial artist in the same agency where she had, as a teenager, washed brushes. After ten years on the job, she approached Chicago publisher Rand McNally and Company with her portfolio and came away with an assignment to illustrate a children's book. It was the first of her eighty-five illustrated books, mostly to do with babies, children, pets, and farm animals. In her search for subject matter, Esther went to parks, playgrounds, dog shows, zoos, and the children's room at the local library. In addition to drawing pictures for small books, she collected small books, some dating back as early as 1804.

Esther met Carl W. Lichtenstein, her husband-to-be, at a summer place in Eagle River, Wisconsin. Born in Detroit in 1902, Lichtenstein (and his twin brother) grew up in Indianapolis, attended Public School 32, and graduated from Technical High School in 1919. Lichtenstein (and his twin brother) worked for the Flickinger insurance agency in Indianapolis. In 1933, following their summer romance, Carl W. Lichtenstein and Esther Friend were married. They lived for some time in Chicago and began taking lessons together at Hull House beginning around 1939. They also started a business making ceramic figurines and Christmas ornaments called Lichten Ware. Lichten Ware was sold in stores all over the country, from Hawaii to Florida, and is still available through dealers and collectors.

By the 1950s, Esther Friend and Carl Lichtenstein were in Indianapolis, where she continued in her career as an illustrator. She also exhibited her paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures. Esther Friend, a widow, died at Hooverwood nursing home in Indianapolis on December 13, 1991. She was eighty-four years old.

Above, a gallery of covers of books illustrated by Indianapolis artist Esther Friend.

A Lichten Ware figurine, created by Esther Friend and her husband, Carl W. Lichtenstein.

Esther Friend, a photographic portrait from Ruth Mac Kay's column "White Collar Girl" in the Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1947, page 38.

In observance of International Women's Day, March 8, 2017.

Text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Robert W. Lahr (1890-1970)

Robert Wadsworth Lahr was born on February 18, 1890, in Evansville, Indiana. He received his education at the Art Students League in New York City and at the Art Institute of Chicago. Lahr served as director of the School of Fine and Applied Arts at James Milliken University in Decatur, Illinois. He was also a college professor in Pullman, Washington, perhaps at Washington State College (now University). The early 1940s found Lahr back in the city of his birth. He died there in January 1970.

I have found just one illustration credit for Robert W. Lahr, A Book of Giant Stories,  compiled by Kathleen Adams and Frances Elizabeth Atchinson, from 1926. The compilers wrote their introduction from Evansville. Unfortunately neither is listed in Indiana Books and Their Authors.

An illustration for "Mollie Whuppie" from A Book of Giant Stories.

And one for "The Selfish Giant" from the same book.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Josephine Hollingsworth (1903 or 1904-1964)

Josephine Hollingsworth was born in 1903 or 1904 in Lebanon, Indiana, and as a child lived in New Castle and Indianapolis. She attended the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and graduated in 1926 after four years of study, making her one of the first class at Herron to receive a Diploma in Fine Arts (DFA). As a student and after graduating, Josephine taught art at Beech Grove, Shortridge High School, and George and Gordon Mess' Circle Art Academy. She also studied with Carolyn Ashbrook and Indiana University extension.

In 1929, Josephine set out for Chicago where she landed a job with a publisher of children's books. Her illustrations appeared in a book on natural history, a series of twelve readers for children, all fairy tales, and Pioneer Fire Makers by Bella VanAmburgh. Josephine also did advertising art for Indianapolis businessman Russell Fortune for publication in Good Furniture magazine. While in Chicago, Josephine continued her education at the Art Institute of Chicago.

On May 4, 1930, she married Howard Ross Poulson in Indianapolis. They had two children, Thomas Layman Poulson (b. 1934), a professor of biology at Yale University, and Carolyn Jo (Poulson) Hofstad. (See the comment below.) Jo Poulson lived with her family in Winnetka, Illinois, and Manhasset, New York. (See the postscript below.) She died on March 5, 1964, while visiting her mother in Miami, Florida.

A bookplate design by Indiana illustrator Josephine Hollingsworth.

Postscript (Dec. 6, 2012): I have found a little more on Josephine Hollingsworth Poulson, also known as Jo Poulson. After moving to the Chicago area and marrying H. Ross Poulson, Jo studied watercolor painting under Francis Chapin, a well known Chicago artist and a teacher at the Herron School of Art (1938). In March 1942, she returned to Indianapolis for a one-woman show of her watercolors at the Hoosier Art Galleries in the State Life Building. Prior to that, she had exhibited in the Hoosier Salon. She painted not only landscapes but also street scenes, circus scenes, and subjects as varied as a floral still life and a navy destroyer. At the time of her one-woman show, Jo Poulson was living in Winnetka, Illinois, and rearing a family.

This watercolor by Jo Poulson is in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Postscript dated December 6, 2012.
Revised and updated on December 6, 2019.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2019 Terence E. Hanley