Clotilde Embree Funk (1893-1991)

In observance of National Women's History Month, Indiana Illustrators presents an entry on a woman who not only illustrated books on history, but also lived a fair bit of it herself during her near century on earth.

Clotilde Embree Funk was born on June 25, 1893, in Princeton, Indiana, to a pioneer family of Huguenot origin. After attending local schools in Princeton, she set off for the Tudor School and the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, where she studied from 1911 to 1913. Her art career began in earnest when she moved to New York City in 1917 to live with her older sister Louise. Clotilde studied at the Cooper Union Art School (1917-1920) and worked as a freelance commercial artist, while Louise labored away as a fifteen-dollar-a-week fashion editor.

The two advanced their careers over the next decade, and by the early 1930s, change was in the works for both. Louise Embree wrote a biography of George Washington and submitted it to a New York publisher, accompanied by younger sister Clotilde’s sketches. In rapid order, Clotilde Embree married Claude Douglas Funk (a man she had known since third grade) while on vacation in her hometown of Princeton, the book was accepted, and Clotilde spent her honeymoon working on her illustrations. In 1931, she settled in Indianapolis to raise a family, and the following year, A Child’s Life of George Washington by Louise Embree came out. Clotilde Embree was off on a new career.

Over the next three decades, Clotilde illustrated more than sixty children's books. She drew the pictures for some of the first in the "Childhood of Famous Americans" series published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company of Indianapolis. The illustrations for biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, and George Washington Carver (all by Augusta Stevenson) and Stephen Foster (by Helen Higgins) were hers. Clotilde's other books included Cecilia’s Locket and her own favorite, To See the Queen (1954). 

An injury to her wrist forced Clotilde to give up illustration in favor of painting in 1962. She studied under Martha Slaymaker, whom she called "the biggest influence on my later work." Thereafter, she exhibited in Indianapolis and elsewhere and won several prizes for her work.

Clotilde Embree Funk died at age ninety-eight on November 10, 1991, in Noblesville, Indiana. She was a small woman with a great talent, and she loved children and drawing children.

Early in her career, Clotilde Embree Funk worked in silhouette, a seemingly simple form. However, the use of three silhouettes on this cover, each of a different color and depth, adds a level of sophistication.

To See the Queen (1954) was Clotilde's favorite among her books. Not long ago, I found a copy of her book at an antique mall. Now I can present the front and back covers and the full effect of Clotilde's drawing.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 by Terence E. Hanley

Adolph G. Metzner (1834-1918)

The most recent issue of Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History (Winter 2011), the magazine of the Indiana Historical Society, features an article about Adolph G. Metzner, a German-born artist who served on the side of the Union during the Civil War. The cover and most of the contents of this issue commemorate the sesquicentennial of Indiana's involvement in the Civil War.

Born in 1834, Metzner enlisted in Indianapolis in 1861 and served in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Along the way, he drew and painted pictures of what he witnessed. Traces displays several pieces of artwork in full color, from a burlesque camp scene to one of the most gruesome images I have ever seen published in an American magazine. The images are drawn from the same sources used in the publication of a book called Blood Shed in This War: Civil War Illustrations by Captain Adolph Metzner, 32nd Indiana by the author of the article in Traces, Michael A. Peake.

Metzner returned to Indianapolis after the war and worked as a pharmacist. He later gave up pharmacy for research and industry in the field of ceramics. He died in New Jersey in 1918 but is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.

The name of the article, by the way, is "Adolph G. Metzner: Entrepreneur, Soldier, and Artist." And rather than steal any thunder from the book, the magazine, the article, or the author, I will simply refer you to them, each one as you like.

Copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Lucy Fitch Perkins (1865-1937)

Today, March 8, 2011, is International Women's Day, and the centennial year of the first International Women's Day. This year is also the centennial year for the publication of a book called The Dutch Twins by Indiana author and illustrator Lucy Fitch Perkins. Although Lucy Fitch Perkins had previously written and illustrated two books, The Dutch Twins was her first based on a pair of ideas which had recently impressed the author. In her words:

One was the necessity for mutual respect and understanding between people of different nationalities if we are ever to live in peace. . . . The other . . . that a really big theme can be comprehended by children if it is presented in a way that holds their interest and engages their sympathies.

The Dutch Twins was the first in a series that eventually totaled twenty-seven titles, from The Cave Twins (1916), to The Spartan Twins (1918), to books about twins from Ireland, Mexico, Switzerland, France, the Philippines, Italy, and many other nations and periods of history. I think a remembrance of Lucy Fitch Perkins and her work is just right for today's occasion.

Lucy Adeline Fitch Perkins, descended from passengers of the Mayflower, was born on July 12, 1865, in the little town of Maples, Indiana. Her formal instruction in art came at the School of Boston Museum of Fine Arts from 1884 to 1888 under Robert Vannoh, Otto Grundman, and Frederic Crowninshield. After a year of work for the Prang Educational Company, Fitch moved to Brooklyn, where she taught art at the newly established Pratt Institute. At the end of "four happy winters teaching and studying" (1887-1891), Fitch married architect Dwight Heald Perkins (1867-1941), whom she had met in Boston. The newly wed couple returned to the Midwest, to Evanston, Illinois, where she spent most of the rest of her life and where she bore two children.

Lucy Fitch Perkins was a prolific author and illustrator of children's books. During her forty-year career, she wrote and illustrated nearly four dozen books. Her first book (illustrations only) was Fairy Starlight and the Dolls, published in 1896. The Goose Girl: A Mother's Lap Book of Rhymes and Pictures (1906) and A Book of Joys: The Story of a New England Summer (1907) were her own, words and pictures all. In 1911, she hit on a winning formula with The Dutch Twins. Nearly every year for the rest of her life, Lucy Fitch Perkins wrote and illustrated a new book, mostly about twins. In 1935, her two-millionth copy rolled off the printing press, a testament to the sureness of her vision of three decades before. The last twins book, The Dutch Twins and Little Brother (1938), was published posthumously, for Lucy Fitch Perkins died on March 18, 1937, in Pasadena, California.

In the following pictures, you can see the artist's fine handling of the human form and of design and color. There is of course an art nouveau influence. Some of these pictures are also quite like the poster designs of the day. In any case, you will see that Lucy Fitch Perkins, like so many women artists, then and now, drew and painted women and children with real delicacy, warmth, and affection. The last image may not be quite right for today's observance, but I couldn't pass up the chance to show it, as striking and dramatic as it is.

Text copyright 2011, 2024 by Terence E. Hanley

Robert K. Abbett (1926-2015)

Robert Kennedy Abbett was born in Hammond, Indiana, on January 5, 1926, to Clarence C. and Vere (Kennedy) Abbett. He studied nights at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and graduated from Purdue University and the University of Missouri. Bob Abbett served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Abbett wrote for a public relations firm in Chicago before embarking on a career as an artist, working in succession for a number of art studios. His first magazine illustrations were for Extension magazine. Abbett's list of freelance clients during the 1950s and '60s includes Argosy, Reader's Digest, Redbook, Sports Afield, This Week, and True, as well as Ballantine, Bantam, Dell, Fawcett, Pocket, Pyramid, and Signet books.

Bob Abbett left illustration behind in the 1970s, afterwards devoting himself to painting pictures of outdoor sporting scenes, hunting dogs, game animals, and similar subjects. He was also a portraitist, a teacher, and magazine columnist. He lived at his own Oakdale Farm in Connecticut for many years and died at home in Bridgewater, Connecticut, on June 20, 2015. He was eighty-nine years old.

You can read more about Bob Abbett at his official website, Oakdale Prints, here, and on a recent blog entry at a blog called Today's Inspiration by Leif Peng, here. A Google Image search will show a variety of Mr. Abbett's many fine paperback cover illustrations from the 1960s. Below is a small sampling from my own library.

Revised and updated on December 6, 2019.
Text copyright 2011, 2024 by Terence E. Hanley

Henry Jackson Lewis (ca. 1837-1891)

Henry Jackson Lewis is considered the first black political cartoonist in the United States. He was born a slave in either 1837 or 1838 (according to his son, Chester Arthur Lewis) in or near Water Valley, Mississippi, not far south of Oxford. He taught himself to read, write, and draw, overcoming not only his beginnings in bondage but also a childhood accident in which he fell into a fire, leaving him crippled in his left hand and blind in his left eye.

Lewis' story does not pick up again until 1872 when he purchased a lot in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, at about the same time he married Lavinia Dixon. Chester Arthur Lewis was the last survivor of the Lewises' seven children, and it is by way of a tape-recorded interview with him that we know much of what we know about his artist father. The younger Lewis also donated some of his father's artwork to the Du Sable Museum of African-American History in Chicago.

Lewis got his start as an artist by sketching for Harper's Weekly during the late 1870s. His skills as a topographical and architectural draftsman helped secure him work with the Smithsonian Institution under Edward Palmer and his Indian Mound Survey. The original drawings for the project are in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives. Still other engravings based on Lewis’ drawings were published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper in April and May of 1883.

Around 1885, Lewis found employment as a porter at the Arkansas Gazette and learned something about the newspaper trade by watching staff artists and engravers at work. In late 1888 or early 1889, he relocated to Indianapolis, recruited by editor Edward Elder Cooper of The Freeman, a black newspaper billed by its publisher as "The Harper’s Weekly of the Colored Race" and "A National Illustrated Colored Newspaper." Targets of his cartoons included racist policies and expressions, but Cooper and Jackson waged their harshest campaign against the Republican administration of President Benjamin Harrison (who was, incidentally, also from Indianapolis).

Lewis' last drawing appeared in the March 28, 1891, issue of The Freeman. Less than two weeks later, on April 9, 1891, he died in Indianapolis. His family remained in Indianapolis. John W. Lewis, the oldest Lewis child, became an artist himself and drew for The Freeman, The Indianapolis World, and The Indianapolis Recorder.

Henry Jackson Lewis--the first known black political cartoonist in the United States. This is a self-portrait from the Indianapolis-based Freeman. Note that Jackson is turned to his left: a childhood accident left him blind in his left eye.

One of Lewis' drawings of Indian mounds, this one at Walnut Lake Station, Arkansas.

Finally, a pair of Lewis' political cartoons, from The Freeman, June 2, 1889.

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An entry in observance of Black History Month.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 by Terence E. Hanley

Egypt

Without trivializing what the people of Egypt have accomplished, Indiana Illustrators offers an entry on Egypt, with images by Indiana artists.

An advertisement for Caterpillar Tractors by Junius S. Cravens (1883-1936).

A striking illustration for a short story, perhaps from Cosmopolitan, by Walter S. Louderback (1887-1941).

A.R. Tilburne (1887-1965) illustrated several covers for Weird Tales.  Animals were a specialty.

Another Tilburne cover for Weird Tales.

Hugh Rankin (1878-1956) preceded Tilburne as a cover artist for Weird Tales.

Finally, another Rankin cover for Weird Tales.

And an artist whose work, inspired by Egypt, seems to be unavailable on the Internet, despite its prominence: Helen Eaton Jacoby (1888-1967), born and educated in Indianapolis, designed a series of friezes with an Egyptian theme for the Murat Shrine Temple in her hometown sometime before World War II. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any images of her work. If anyone has access to them, please send them my way. Best wishes to the people of Egypt and throughout the Middle East in their efforts to bring democracy and prosperity to their region.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 by Terence E. Hanley

Robert J. Wildhack (1881-1940)

Illustrator, poster artist, and comedian Robert J. Wildhack was born on August 27, 1881, in the central Illinois town of Pekin and attended high school in Indianapolis, where he studied under Otto Stark. After graduating from Manual Training High School in 1899, Wildhack worked as an illustrator for the Indianapolis Sentinel before moving to New York City in 1901. With a year's study under Robert Henri at the Chase School of Art (where his classmates included Glenn O. Coleman, Walter Jack Duncan, Rockwell Kent, Coles Phillips, Edward Hopper, and Guy Pene du Bois), Wildhack began his art career in New York with a sign painting firm. He mixed pigments for ten months before moving on to work as a designer with an advertising agency. Before long, Wildhack's drawing and design work had caught the editor's eye at McClure's magazine, and by the 1910s, Wildhack had become one of the top cover artists and poster artists in America. Among his clients were The Century, Collier's, Life, The Reader, Scribner's, and Success.

Shortly before America's entry into World War I, Wildhack joined Charles Dana Gibson, Henry Reuterdahl, and others in the establishment of the Division of Pictorial Publicity of the Committee on Public Information. Between April 1917 and November 1918, the division provided both government and non-government agencies (such as the Red Cross) with hundreds of posters, cards, and cartoons in support of the war effort. The most famous of these works was undoubtedly James Montgomery Flagg's iconic "Uncle Sam Wants You!" poster.

As a boy in Indianapolis, Wildhack sang in a quartet and developed a talent for mimicry. His talents carried him into the vaudeville theater, his most memorable routine being a catalogue of "Snores and Sneezes," recorded by Victor Records around 1915.  His other recorded routines included "Unnatural History" and "Unnatural History II." After the war ended, Americans began turning away from magazines and towards the silver screen for their entertainment. Wildhack followed the trend by relocating to southern California in 1920. During the thirties, he hosted his own radio show and reprised his early routines on stage and in the movies. In Life Begins at 8:40, a Broadway hit during 1934-1935, Wildhack gave a comic lecture on "Sound Phenomena," scientifically classifying snores such as 2d, "The Westinghouse Airbrake," and 2f, "The Troubled Conscious." As Professor Hornblow, he repeated the routine in Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), starring Jack Benny and Eleanor Powell.  In Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), Wildhack went from snorer to sneezer. He played a somewhat less comic role as Rudolph Herzing in Back Door to Heaven in 1939.

A modest career in the movies came to an unfortunate end with Wildhack's death on June 19, 1940, in Montrose, California. Coincidentally, another, more notable screen comedian, Charlie Chase, died on the same day.

A cover by Robert Wildhack for Scribner's magazine, 1910.

And another for Life, 1912. Wildhack was also known as a poster artist, but as his designs show, there wasn't much difference between a poster and the near poster-sized magazine covers of his day.

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 by Terence E. Hanley