A Springtime Picture by William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)

William Merritt Chase was born on November 1, 1849, in Williamsburg, Indiana, to merchant David Chase and Sarah Swaim Chase. In 1861, the Chase family moved to Indianapolis, where he studied art under Barton S. Hays. In 1869, he left Indiana for New York City, and in 1872, the young artist embarked for studies at the Royal Academy in Munich. Chase remained in Europe for several years, living, studying, and painting in Venice in 1876-1877 with Frank Duveneck and John Twachtman. In 1878, he returned to New York to teach at the newly established Art Students League. Artist Charles Henry Miller wrote: "Mr. Chase upon returning to New York virtually took the town by storm, capturing its chief artistic citadel [. . .] the exhibition gallery of the Tenth Street Studio Building [. . .]." (Quoted in William Merritt Chase, 1849-1916 by Ronald G. Pisano, 1983, p. 42.) For the next nearly four decades, Chase lived, taught, painted, and advanced the cause of fine art in America, exhibiting in his many wonderfully good portraits, still-life paintings, and landscapes his bravura with brush and chalk. Some of his impressionistic paintings are really quite astonishing in their technique.

William Merritt Chase died on October 25, 1916, in New York City. He and Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley were exact contemporaries, having been born in and died in the same years. Whereas most of Riley's poems have not aged well, Chase's paintings live on as the imperishable works of a great artist. Below is one example, "The Nursery" from 1890, a fine picture for this beautiful spring season.

For my parents' wedding anniversary.

Text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Hoosier Cartoonists on the Cover of Judge

The Sunday newspaper comic section in America has its origins, as so much of our popular culture does, in the late nineteenth century. The Sunday comics are of course in color, and they got their start as inexpensive competitors to (and imitators of) the color comic weeklies, first of which was Puck, founded in 1876 by Austrian-born artist Joseph Keppler (1838-1894).  (1) After Puck came The Judge in 1881, then Life, in 1883, the latter made famous by Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), creator of the Gibson Girl.

Puck, The Judge, and Life benefitted from innovations in printing technology, as well as from improved methods of mass production and mass transportation in the late 1800s. Newspaper printing lagged by comparison, but in 1892, the Chicago Inter Ocean became the first paper to print a color supplement. The Sunday comic supplement--what became the Sunday comic section and ultimately just the Sunday comics--soon became a feature of big-city papers in New York and Chicago. By the early or mid 1900s, even smaller papers had full-color Sunday comics, although they often outsourced the printing to companies in St. Louis, Buffalo, etc.

Although Puck ceased publication in 1918, its covers and especially its double-sized center spreads are still with us. If you look hard enough, you'll find them at antique stores and malls, as well as on line, usually at reasonable prices. The old Life magazine, on the other hand, has been largely forgotten. If you mention Life, most people think of the photojournalistic version of 1936-2000. Copies of the old Life may be hard to come by.

The Judge, usually just called Judge, is probably the least well known of the three, having come to an end in 1947, beyond living memory for most people of today. In its day, though, the magazine featured covers by Rea Irvin (1881-1972), John Held, Jr. (1889-1958), and Dr. Seuss (1904-1991), among many other luminaries of the popular arts in America. 

Hoosiers had their place on the cover of Judge as well, chiefly Don Herold (1889-1966) of Bloomfield. Below are a few of his covers, plus a bonus cover by Nate Collier (1883-1961), who, though he didn't enjoy the good fortune of having been born in Indiana, studied cartooning by correspondence with the National School of Illustrating of Indianapolis and worked as a cartoonist for the Kokomo Dispatch in the early 1900s.

Note

(1) Although I have not found any direct record of Joseph Keppler's sojourn in Indianapolis in the late 1860s to about 1870, I have an article that says that he indeed lived in that city before moving on to St. Louis. By the way, Keppler should not be confused with the artist Max Francis Klepper (1861-1907), as has happened so often.

Judge, the Etiquette Number from November 28, 1925, with a cover by Don Herold.

Judge, February 27, 1926, again with a cover by Herold.

Judge, April 24, 1926, with a cover by Don Herold and "T.S."

Judge, Younger Set Number, July 17, 1926. Don Herold was once again the artist. His theme (and pun): "How to Rear a Daughter." You might think that no one has ever looked like a Don Herold cartoon. In fact, many of his male figures were more or less self-portraits. By the way, Herold's daughter was Doris Herold Lund (1919-2003), author of the book Eric (1974). Herold is also the originator of the quote, "Actresses happen even in the best families."

Judge, Red Number, date unknown, with a cover by Don Herold. 

Finally, Judge, The Great Melodrama Number, January 28, 1928, with a cover drawing by Nate Collier.

Text copyright 2018, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

A Summertime Picture from Johnny Gruelle

Johnny Gruelle (1880-1938) was born in Arcola, Illinois, but he grew up in Indianapolis, just east of the downtown area and not far from the Lockerbie Square neighborhood where James Whitcomb Riley lived. Gruelle's father, the artist Richard Buckner Gruelle (1851-1914), was friends with Riley (1849-1916). Known as the Hoosier Poet, Riley was famed for his poems of childhood and life in small-town Indiana, including "Little Orphant Annie" and "The Raggedy Man." The poem "Little Orphant Annie" lent its name to Harold Gray's long-running comic strip, Little Orphan Annie. (Like Johnny Gruelle, Gray was born in Illinois but lived in Indiana. He graduated from Purdue University in 1917.) Some years before that, Johnny Gruelle and his family took inspiration from "The Raggedy Man" and named their famous dolls, Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy, after Riley's poem.

The Gruelle family didn't live far from downtown Indianapolis, yet their neighborhood was rural, or at most suburban in character. I suspect the Gruelle children would have gone berry-picking when they were young. It's that time of year now, when the black raspberries, then the blackberries, ripen and are ready to pick. Berry-picking is the subject of the following picture and poem, the picture by Gruelle, the poem by Ethel Fairmont (1881-1977), from her book Rhymes for Kindly Children (Wise-Parslow, 1937). You can read more about Ethel Fairmont at the website of Nancy S. Weyant, here.

Some of the illustrator's pictures for Ethel's book are a little too British, but that's okay, for Johnny Gruelle was all American and a Hoosier at that. I should point out that today, July 22, 2017, is the anniversary of the death of James Whitcomb Riley. He died one hundred and one years ago, in the centennial year of the state in which he was born.

Text copyright 2017, 2024 Terence E. Hanley