Glenn O. Coleman (1881-1932)

Glenn Odem Coleman was born on July 18, 1881, in Springfield, Ohio, but grew up in his parents' home state of Indiana. His father, Cassius M. Coleman, was a pressman for an Indianapolis newspaper, his mother, Minnie Odem Coleman, a singer and pianist. As a boy Coleman hung around the riverfront on the west side of the city, in rail yards and around Kingan's meatpacking plant. The urbanized and industrialized landscape would become the focus of his art.

Glenn Coleman attended the Industrial Training School, forerunner to Manual Training High School. His classmates would have included illustrator Walter Jack Duncan (1881-1941), illustrator and author Robert Cortes Holliday (1880-1947), poster artist and performer Robert J. Wildhack (1881-1940), and artist and educator Harry E. Wood (1879-1958). Coleman did not finish his high school program however. Instead he went to work. In 1901 he was listed in the Indianapolis city directory as an illustrator with the Indianapolis Press. Three years later he was in New York City, also working as an illustrator. Coleman continued his art education in New York, studying first under William Merritt Chase, then under Robert Henri. Chase's other students at the time included not only Wildhack and Duncan from back home in Indiana, but also Rockwell Kent, Coles Phillips, Edward Hopper, and Guy Pene du Bois.

Glenn O. Coleman is known now for his association with Robert Henri, Everett Shinn, John Sloan, and the other artists of the "Ashcan School," so called because of their interest in city scenes and the grimier side of life. In 1909 The Craftsman printed four full-page reproductions of Coleman's series entitled "Undercurrents of New York Life." Within a few short years, the artist began contributing to the leftist organ The Masses under the editorship of Max Eastman and the art directorship of John Sloan. Art Young (1866-1944) was probably the most well known and accomplished of the cartoonists who contributed to The Masses. He may also have originated the term "Ashcan School."

For the rest of his relatively brief life, Glenn Coleman created paintings and graphic art depicting contemporary life in the city. His work found its way into the collections of several museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. In the year of Coleman's death, art critic Holger Cahill placed him in the company of John Sloan as a leader among realists "whose notations of contemporary life in paintings, etchings, and lithographs are among the fine contributions to American contemporary art."

After keeping a studio in Long Beach, Long Island, for many years, Glenn O. Coleman died childless on May 8, 1932, at age fifty. His father, a widower, died three months later, thus bringing an end to the Coleman line.

A cartoon by Glenn O. Coleman from The Masses, 1915. The medium looks like crayon on textured paper or perhaps on linen. The style is dark and heavy and hearkens back to the lithographic cartoons of the nineteenth century. Honoré Daumier was the exemplar of that type of cartooning. The gag is the old "He Said-She Said" type from before the refinements brought about by The New Yorker and its cartoonists of the 1920s.

Here's another cartoon by Coleman, really an illustration for an unwritten story or even a piece of graphic art approaching fine art. The gag, though pertinent today, is mostly superfluous. This is from Art for the Masses: A Radical Magazine and Its Graphics, 1911-1917 by Rebecca Zurier (1988).

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Alice Claire Hollingsworth (1907-2000)

Alice Claire Hollingsworth was born on February 12, 1907, in Indiana, probably in Indianapolis. Her father was a clerk in city hall, her mother a dressmaker. Alice's older sister, Helen Hollingsworth, taught music in public schools. I don't know where Alice C. Hollingsworth received her art education, but in the 1930 census, she gave her occupation as "commercial artist." Alice worked in an electric shop.

Alice Claire Hollingsworth is listed on the website AskArt as an illustrator and an exhibitor at the Hoosier Salon. Unfortunately, there is very little information on her career as an artist and no images that I have found so far. Alice is more well known under a completely different identity, as a philanthropist and matron of the arts named Holly Magill.

Holly Magill was the wife of Arthur Francis Magill (1907-1995), heir to a garment business called Her Majesty Industries. In 1976, Magill sold his business to Gulf & Western for about eighteen million dollars. Three years later, Magill and his wife shocked and surprised the art world when he bought a collection of works by Andrew Wyeth, owned until then by movie executive Joseph E. Levine, and lent them to the Greenville County Museum of Art for display. The move attracted such attention that Magill received a writeup in People magazine (Jan. 21, 1980). A decade later, Magill sold his collection of twenty-six Wyeths to a Japanese buyer for forty-two million dollars.

Both Magill and his wife were recognized for their philanthropy. Holly Magill received the Order of the Palmetto, South Carolina's highest civilian honor, in 1982, and an honorary degree in humanities from Furman University in 1998. (Her husband received the Order of the Palmetto a month after his wife's award.) There is (or was) a gallery named in Holly's honor at the Greenville County Museum of Art in Greenville, South Carolina.

Alice Claire "Holly" Magill died on April 19, 2000, in Greenville and was buried in her adopted home city.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Mary Alys Polk (ca. 1903-?)

Mary Alys Polk was born in about 1903 in Greenwood, Indiana, to Burr H. and Carrie Polk. Her sister, Helen M. Polk, was younger by a year. The family lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Indianapolis, where Mr. Polk was a working man. Mary Alys Polk (also called Mary Alice Polk) graduated from Technical High School (now Arsenal Technical High School) in 1921 and studied at the Herron School of Art from 1921 to 1926. She also studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City in the summer of 1926. She taught at Tudor Hall in 1924 before moving on to teach drawing and art at the Indiana State School for the Deaf, also in 1924. In 1927, Mary Alys took a position as supervisor of art for the Franklin, Indiana, schools. She resigned that position in 1929 to marry Wallace Stover, an Indiana artist then living in New York City. Mary Alys Polk was a painter, illustrator, and costume designer, and she exhibited in the Hoosier Salon. Mary Alys Polk Stover is supposed to have lived in China Lake, California, in the 1960s. And that's all I know of her.

Revised on April 12, 2016.

Copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

May the Fourth Be With You! 2013

Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster (1978), the first Star Wars novel, with cover art by Indiana illustrator Ralph McQuarrie.

Frank H. Wagner (1870-1942) & Mary North Wagner (1875-1957)

In doing my research for today's posting, I was reminded of an exchange from What's Up, Doc? (1972):

Hugh: I am Hugh.

Judge Maxwell: You are me?

Hugh: No, I am Hugh.

Judge Maxwell: Stop saying that. Make him stop saying that.

What does a screwball comedy from the 1970s have to do with Indiana illustrators? Only this: If you look for a Hoosier artist named Frank U. Wagner, you'll end up going down the wrong path and for a very long way. In the end, you will be lost. And why is that? Because the artist's name was not Frank U. Wagner, as people even from his own time often believed, but Frank Hugh Wagner.

Frank Hugh Wagner was born on January 4, 1870, in Milton, Indiana. A painter, sculptor, illustrator, and teacher, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Frederick Freer (1849-1908) and John Vanderpoel (1857-1911). Wagner exhibited at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 and with the Hoosier Salon. Wagner also taught art--including illustration and cartooning--at Winona College in Winona Lake, Indiana, during its brief existence in the early 1900s.

Although Frank Wagner's name can be found here and there on the Internet, he is not well remembered. I can offer on his behalf two claims to fame. First, Wagner applied for and received a patent for a type of picture book now called a "tunnel book." Rather than explain the concept, I'll just show an image from the Official Gazette of the U.S. Patent Office, dated June 11, 1912 (page 322):

The Hole Book by Peter Newell (1862-1924), published in 1908, the same year in which Wagner applied for his patent, is a similar type of book. I don't know whether Frank Wagner ever published a tunnel book, but at least he received a patent for just such a design. Note the name on the patent: "Frank U. Wagner."

Second, Frank H. Wagner drew the illustrations for Ten Little Brownie Men: The Second Brownie Book (1911), which was written by a brother-and-sister team, Nathaniel Moore Banta and Alpha Banta Benson. The Brownies, created by the Canadian illustrator and cartoonist Palmer Cox (1840-1924), were wildly popular in books, magazines, and newspaper comics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I'm not sure what relationship if any the Bantas had with Palmer Cox. In any case, Nathaniel M. Banta and Alpha Banta Benson of Renssalaer, Indiana, are subject for a blog posting of another day.

Frank Wagner was married to Mary Lovett North, an illustrator, painter, book designer, and lecturer in her own right. She was born on December 24, 1875, in Milford, Kosciusko County, Indiana. Her parents were Captain Samson Jackson North, a lawyer and a Civil War veteran, and Mary A. Egbert North. Mary L. North was also descended from David Grosset Drake (1759-1850), a private in the New York troops during the Revolutionary War. Like her husband, Mary L. North Wagner studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Freer and Vanderpoel and exhibited at the Panama-Pacific Exposition and with the Hoosier Salon. Among her other teachers was the Hoosier artist William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). Mary also exhibited with the Chicago Society of Miniature Painters.

Alone or with her husband, Mary North Wagner wrote and illustrated a children's book called The Adventures of Jimmy Carrot (1911). She also wrote the lyrics for a song called "The Brownie" (music by Maude L. McLaughlin). The 1930 census listed Mary as a lecturer in art. The Wagners' great-granddaughter, Tammy Setterquist Hepp, has let us know that Mary North Wagner lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Frank and Mary Wagner lived in Milford, Indiana, and in Chicago and raised a large brood of six seven children. [See the comments below.] Frank Wagner died on July 21, 1942, in Chicago. In later years, Mary Wagner lived on a yacht called the Morie, moored in the yacht basin in Alexandria, Virginia, with her son, John North Wagner. He worked for the U.S. Bureau of Printing and Engraving and appeared in a book called How Money Is Made, presumably a book by David C. Cooke published in 1962. Mary Lovett North Wagner died on June 21, 1957, in Alexandria, Alexandria City, Virginia. She was eighty-one years old.

Revised on September 29, 2024. Thanks to Tammy Setterquist Hepp, comment below, for further information on her great-grandmother.

The cover, title page, and endpapers for Ten Little Brownie Men: The Second Brownie Book (1911) by N. Moore Banta and Alpha Banta Benson and illustrated by Frank U. Wagner. ("Stop saying that. Make him stop saying that.") Note that the lyrics to the Brownie song are by Mary North Wagner.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Raymond E. Lanterman (1916-1994)

Raymond E. Lanterman was born on May 20, 1916, in Howard County, Indiana, presumably in Kokomo. His parents were Harry W. Lanterman, a chemist and draftsman, and Minnie A. (Brown) Lanterman. Ray Lanterman graduated from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and worked in Chicago as a commercial artist before enlisting in the U.S. Army in October 1940. His place of enlistment was Fort Benjamin Harrison, northeast of Indianapolis. According to the newsletter of the Polynesian Voyaging Society (Feb.-Mar. 1994), Lanterman was present at the attack on Pearl Harbor and took part in the invasion at Normandy. Lanterman achieved the rank of first lieutenant and settled in Hawaii in the 1940s. It is for his books on Hawaii that he is known today.

In addition to being a commercial artist and illustrator, Ray E. Lanterman was president of the Hawaiian Astronomical Society and the head of the membership committee of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. He was also the co-author of books, either as a writer or illustrator or both. His credits include:

• Aunty Pinau's Banyan Tree (1967) by Helen Lamar Berkey
• What's My Name in Hawaiian? (1967) by Louise Bonner
• The Secret Cave of Kamanawa (1968) by Helen Lamar Berkey
• Incredible Hawaii (1974) with Terence Barrow
• Twelve Sky Maps (1974) with Will Kyselka
• Maui--How It Came To Be (1980) with Will Kyselka
• More Incredible Hawaii (1986) with Terence Barrow

Raymond E. Lanterman died on January 23, 1994, in Honolulu. A recipient of the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross (for actions on D-Day), he was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in the city of his death. You can read more about him on my blog, Book Jacket Bios.

A selection of Raymond Lanterman's books, mostly about Hawaii.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The First Art School in Indiana

No one can say for sure who was the first Indiana artist, illustrator, or cartoonist. However, in a book called American Pioneer Arts and Artists (1942), the author, Carl W. Drepperd, is unequivocal about the date, place, and founder of the Hoosier State's first school of art:

At New Harmony, Indiana, William McClure opened the first school for drawing, painting, engraving and lithography in the state, 1826. Charles Alexander [sic] Lesueur was the art teacher at the New Harmony School, 1826 to 1837.

William McClure (1763-1840) was a Scottish-born geologist, cartographer, merchant, and educator. He is known as "the father of American geology." If a map is an illustration, then McClure might be considered one of the earliest of Indiana illustrators. He made a geological map of the United States published in 1809 and 1817. In the mid 1820s, he settled in Robert Owen's Utopian community of New Harmony, Indiana, and established a school for adults. Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1778-1846), the art teacher at New Harmony, was a French artist and naturalist and a friend of William McClure. He also served as a kind of unofficial artist of the New Harmony experiment. Also in residence at New Harmony was David Dale Owen (1807-1860), son of Robert Owen and a geologist and artist.

The community at New Harmony received visitors in the winter of 1832-1833 in the persons of  Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied (1782-1867), a German aristocrat, explorer, naturalist, and ethnologist, and the artist Johann Carl Bodmer, better known Karl Bodmer (1809-1893). Bodmer was a painter, graphic artist, and illustrator. His work as such would place him in a category as one of Indiana's first illustrators, along with McClure, Lesueur, and Robert Dale Owen.

In his book, Drepperd mentions another early art school within a "female seminary" (the Monroe County Female Academy), located in Bloomington and maintained by Cornelius Pering from 1832 to 1849. Pering, an English-born educator, was born in 1806 and died in 1881.

Mollusks and zoophytes, drawn by Charles Alexandre Lesueur, one of the first Indiana illustrators. This drawing is from 1807, prior to Lesueur's arrival in the Hoosier State.

A drawing of the eastern quoll or eastern native cat (Dasyurus viverrinus), an Australian marsupial, also by Lesueur (date unknown).

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley