Indiana Illustrators and Hoosier Cartoonists: Religious Art

Showing posts with label Religious Art. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Brother Ernest, C.S.C. (1897-1963) & Nancy Garner (1924-2009)

Several years ago, I was at the Indiana State Library in Indianapolis and they were giving away copies of Indiana Authors and Their Books. Three prized and well-made volumes and they were just giving them away. So I took them home and paged through them, reading entries here and there and cataloguing authors of special interest to me, on aviation or genre fiction such as science fiction, fantasy, Westerns, and so on. These books have a special place on my bookshelf and I prize them still.

One of the things you'll notice in reading about Indiana authors is just how many have written on religious subjects. Native Hoosiers are generally conservative and many are churchgoing. These two attributes have helped to build among us a resistance to nonsense. That resistance breaks down occasionally, but most of the time it serves us pretty well.

For Christians, this is Holy Week, which culminates in the celebration of Easter, the holiest day of the year. Just last week, a couple of days before Palm Sunday in fact, I came upon a book by an Indiana author, ~~probably~~ illustrated by an Indiana artist, and on a Christian subject. My friend Troy plopped this book into my cart at the local secondhand store. It came at just the right time. The book is called The Son of Thunder: A Story of St. John the Apostle, and it was written by Brother Ernest, C.S.C. The illustrator was Nancy Garner. It's a slim book, a biography for children and just thirty-eight pages long. It was published by Dujarie Press of Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1947.

Brother Ernest was born John Dominic Ryan on August 4, 1897, in Elyria, Ohio. In 1918, he entered the Congregation of Holy Cross of Notre Dame and took his vows in 1923. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1925, a degree in library science from Catholic University of America, and a master's degree from the University of Portland. Brother Ernest taught in Evansville, Indiana; New Orleans; Indianapolis; Portland, Oregon; and at Notre Dame. The Dujarie Press of Notre Dame was his creation. He founded it in 1943, but even before then he was an author. His first book listed in Indiana Authors and Their Books is Our Brothers, from 1931, but in his thirty-year career, Brother Ernest wrote scores of books, most of them biographies of saints for young readers. At some point he gave up teaching in order to devote himself to writing and to the operation of the Dujarie Press.

The illustrator of The Son of Thunder was Nancy Garner. She was born on April 3, 1924, in New Albany, Indiana, to Dr. William H. Garner, Sr., a surgeon, and Mary Louise Cavanaugh Garner. Unfortunately I have found nothing on her. I suspect she was a student: her work has the look of a young person learning her art. I suspect also that she was an artist close at hand, perhaps at St. Mary's College of Notre Dame, which was at the time affiliated with the University of Notre Dame. If she was indeed a young artist, She attended St. Mary's College, which was at that time affiliated with Notre Dame University. In 1947, when The Son of Thunder was published, Nancy Garner was a young artist. We can imagine her excitement from that long-ago time in receiving an assignment to illustrate the life of another young person, John the Apostle and Evangelist. In about 1947, she married, eventually to have five children. Nancy Marie Garner died on July 12, 2009, in Toledo, Ohio, at age eighty-five. Brother Ernest, C.S.C. (Congregatio a Sancta Cruce) died on March 4, 1963, in Notre Dame and was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in the same place.

HAPPY EASTER!

Updated on May 27, 2024. Thanks to Mary Clare Decker for information on Nancy Garner.

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Pictures for Christmas

The year is almost over, but before it ends, I want to offer a few pictures for the season and wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

First, a charming illustration by John Dukes McKee (1899-1956) of Kokomo, from My American Heritage, collected by Ralph Henry and Lucile Pannell (1959).

Next, the cover design for More About the Live Dolls by Josephine Scribner Gates (1906), an drawing created by Virginia Keep (1878-1962) of Indianapolis.

Not everyone who puts on a Santa suit is nice. Sometimes they can be naughty, as in this illustration by John A. Coughlin (1885-1943), a Chicagoan who studied at the University of Notre Dame. (For that I think we can call him a Hoosier.) The illustration is from Detective Story Weekly, December 19, 1925.

Finally, what the season is really about, an image of the birth of Jesus Christ by Sister Esther Newport (1901-1986) of Clinton, Indiana, from the book A Bible History: With a History of the Church by Rev. Stephen J. McDonald and Elizabeth Jackson (1932, 1940).

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Sister Esther Newport (1901-1986)

Catherine Newport was born on May 17, 1901, in Clinton, Indiana. In 1918, at age seventeen, she entered the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, an order residing west of Terre Haute, Indiana. Taking the name Sister Esther, she taught art in middle school and, beginning in 1930, at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College. Sister Esther was at the Woods, as it is called colloquially, until 1964. After a two-year stint at Marywood School in Evanston, Illinois, she returned to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods to head the art department until 1970.

Sister Esther was educated at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (bachelor of arts, 1932). She received a master of fine arts at Syracuse University in 1939 and an honorary doctorate from Saint Mary's College of Notre Dame, Indiana, in 1956. In addition to being a painter, illustrator, sculptor, and teacher, she was also a writer, lecturer, founder of the Catholic Art Association (in 1937), and editor (from 1937 to 1940) of Christian Social Art Quarterly (later Catholic Art Quarterly).

Sister Esther died at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods on July 9, 1986, at age eighty-five.

Today, March 20, 2016, is Palm Sunday, and a week before Easter. Indiana artist Sister Esther Newport drew this and the following pictures of the events leading to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for a book called A Bible History, with a History of the Church by Rev. Stephen J. McDonald and Elizabeth Jackson, published in 1940 by Row, Peterson and Company of Evanston, Illinois. I found this book just yesterday at a secondhand store.