Ted Chambers (1920-2009)

Theodore T. "Ted" Chambers was born on November 21, 1920, in Indiana, probably in Indianapolis. His parents were William S. and Pearl Chambers, both from the South but in Indianapolis by 1920.

Ted Chambers graduated from Crispus Attucks High School, the Indianapolis high school for black students, in 1938. (Oscar Robertson also graduated from Crispus Attucks.) He studied architecture at Howard University, but only for a year and a half. By 1940 he was back in his home city and working as a draftsman.

Chambers joined the U.S. Navy in 1942. While in training in Boston, he became cartoon editor of Tracer, a monthly service magazine. A member of the first graduating class of black midshipmen, he was stationed in China towards the end of the war and was discharged in May 1946 after attaining the rank of lieutenant/junior grade.

Ted Chambers graduated from Tufts University and studied at the Art Students League in New York City. He began selling cartoons to Argosy, Pic, and This Week Magazine in the summer of 1947. He lived and worked as an artist in New York City as late as 1960 and specialized in product illustration. He also lived in Yonkers and Sag Harbor, New York, and in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. He was a member of the Society of Illustrators.

Ted Chambers, Sr., died on June 16, 2009. His last residence was Sarasota, Florida. He was survived by his wife, son, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Thanks very much to Ted Chambers, Jr., for the information used in this update (April 23, 2014). To Mr. Chambers: I am unable to reply to your comment in the space below, so I will reply here. If you have any artwork by your father that you would like me to post here, please send it along to:

info@hoosiercartoonists.com

I hope you don't mind that I have used the cartoons shown below. Thanks again.

Three magazine gag cartoons by Ted Chambers.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Clare Angell in Picture Postcard Monthly Magazine

Ken Dickinson and I recently collaborated on an article on the artist Clare Angell for Picture Postcard Monthly magazine. The article was published in the November 2013 issue and showcases some of Angell's art in full color. All the images are from Ken's collection. Picture Postcard Monthly is a British magazine. Their website is:

http://www.postcardcollecting.co.uk/

Clare Angell had only a tenuous connection to Indiana. In her book, Art and Artists of Indiana (1921), Mary Q. Burnet listed Angell as having been born in Goshen, Indiana. Public records tell a different story. If those records are accurate, then Angell was born on March 4, 1874, in Lansing, Michigan. His father, Eugene Angell (1848-1907) was also a native of Michigan. Clare Angell's mother, Mary Butterfield Angell (ca. 1853-?), was born in Indiana, probably in Goshen. In 1880 she was with her husband in Lansing. Eugene Angell, a banker and investor, became insolvent in 1883. Presumably he and his wife separated after that. The records of the 1890 census have of course been lost. They may very well have showed Clare Angell with his mother in Goshen, where she was enumerated in the 1900 census with her family. By then Clare Angell was on his own as an artist and probably living in New York City.

Clare Angell worked as a postcard artist and illustrator for about thirty years. Unfortunately, there aren't any records of him after the 1920s. If anyone knows anything more on Clare Eugene Angell, Ken Dickinson and I would very much like to hear from you.

The First World War began one hundred years ago this year. This postcard by Clare Angell will not be the last image you see in 2014 from that long-ago conflict.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

All images are from the collection of Ken Dickinson.

An Indiana Artist: Barbara Rogers Houseworth (1925-2015)

by Ann Massing

Barbara Marie Rogers Houseworth was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on August 11, 1925. She majored in Fine Arts at Indiana University from 1943 to 1946. Her teachers included Robert Elisha Burke (1884-1957), Harry Engel (1901-1970), Robert Laurent (1890-1970), and Steve Green (1917-1999). She married John Horace Houseworth (who was born in Elkhart, Indiana, on August 18, 1918), and they lived in Indianapolis for six years while he finished medical school, completed his internship, and then his residency. Barbara worked at L. S. Ayres doing interior window displays and showed her work in an exhibit of Indiana artists at the John Herron Art Museum. After a year in San Antonio, Texas, then another year in Aurora, Colorado, in 1954 they settled in Urbana, Illinois, where Barbara’s husband joined Carle Clinic, now Carle Foundation Hospital.

In the American Midwest of the 1950s, a woman's place was in the home, and there were few outlets for any artwork produced. So Barbara raised two daughters and was active in the local community--but continued to paint. Although she did exhibit a few times, and even sold some paintings, other than those she gave away, she usually just stuffed them into a drawer to be forgotten. She painted for herself; even her husband was not allowed to participate in her private world.  The paintings were all "experimental." She took up her materials and let go, allowing line, tone, and color to form shapes and figures. Often faces appeared on her paper; there was almost always sadness in her doleful-eyed portraits, usually of someone unknown. Sometimes they were even rather worrying. After her children had grown and left home, she shifted her main interest from painting to the collecting of antiquarian and used books.

In 1956, a neighbor, Larry Connolly, a local high school teacher of English and secretary of the National Council of Teachers of English, approached Barbara to do a map of Homer’s Odyssey for high school literature classes: a commission she launched into with enthusiasm. The amount of time, effort, and  research that she put into the work was not a financial balance, but that undoubtedly never even entered into the equation. It was a channel for her abilities and an opportunity to create something of use, and that was surely worth all she invested over several years. Further similar projects provided an opportunity to research the back streets of London, a city that had always intrigued her. From 1956 to 1966 she produced a series of maps which illustrated landmarks mentioned in books used in high school literature classes: William Shakespeare’s MacBeth and Julius Caesar, Homer’s Odyssey and  Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities, George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Evangeline, and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Barbara never threw anything away as some artists do, and the quality of her entire oeuvre is remarkable; there are no false starts. Each line she drew was vibrant, her colors alive; creative energy flowed down through her fingertips and guided her brush. Picasso-like, she always achieved an image of interest. She may not always have known what it was or why she painted what she did, but the end result was often vibrating with energy, or contained just a hint of something interesting, something "in the coming."

Flying Kites by Barbara Rogers Houseworth.  ca. 1948. Oil on canvas. Approx. 19" x 15".

The Laundry Lady by Barbara Rogers Houseworth. ca. 1949. Oil on card. Approx. 19" x 11".

A literary map of William Shakespeare’s MacBeth drawn by Barbara Rogers Houseworth. A map of Scotland locating all places mentioned in Shakespeare's play, it contains twelve line drawings illustrating important scenes. 32" x 22". Published by Educational Illustrators, 1957.

A literary map of Homer’s Odyssey--A map of the Mediterranean by Barbara Rogers Houseworth, tracing Ulysses' travels home from the Trojan War, illustrating all of his encounters, including those with Circe, the Cyclopes, and the Lotus-Eaters. 34" x 26". Published by Educational Illustrators, 1959?.

A literary map and illustrations of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities drawn by Barbara Rogers Houseworth. Line drawings highlighting the important scenes from the novel. 31" x 22". Published by Educational Illustrators, 1964?.

Update, January 24, 2015: Ann Massing, daughter of Barbara Rogers Houseworth and author of the article above, has brought out a self-published book on her mother's paintings. You can find the listing for the book at the following website:

www.blurb.com/b/5611400-indiana-born-barbara-rogers-houseworth-one-woman-s

Update, February 2, 2015: I have heard from Ann Massing, daughter of Barbara Rogers Houseworth, that her mother passed away on January 12, 2015, at age eighty-nine. I wish to express my condolences to Ms. Massing and to the Houseworth family for their loss.

Text and captions copyright 2014, 2024 Ann Massing
Images are copyrighted by the respective holders of those rights.

Leota Woy (1867-1962)

Leota Woy was born on July 3, 1867, in New Castle, Indiana, and was in Colorado by 1888, where she attended the University of Colorado. In 1920 she moved to Los Angeles. Leota Woy seems to have devoted herself to the design of bookplates, postcards, and crests. I don't know of any other illustration credits for her, although she also worked in stained glass, embroidery, and needlework. She was a member of art clubs in Denver and southern California. Leota Woy died on January 23, 1962, in Glendale, California, at age ninety-four.

Leota Woy was most well known for her bookplates. This one was for the actor John Gilbert.

Here is a bookplate for Walter Sigfrid Olson. Note the vertical signature on the lower right.

During the picture postcard craze of the early 1900s, Leota Woy was a postcard designer. Her frog series from about 1910 was very popular.

Leota signed some of her designs with her initials encircling her copyright notice.

Leota also created a popular Valentine series of cards. This may have been one of the cards in that series.

This looks like a card from the same series.

Leota's design for a card of the Colorado columbine and the Denver Auditorium Building shows a completely different approach. 

Merry Christmas from

Indiana Illustrators & Hoosier Cartoonists!

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Florence G. Parsell (1891-1978)

Florence Gertrude Parsell was born on August 29, 1891, in Angola, Indiana. She illustrated her high school yearbook, The Spectator, and was a class historian, musician, and writer. Florence graduated from Angola High School in 1909 and from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1918 in an academic program. She was an art teacher in Angola and in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for many years (as early as 1910 and as late as 1943). The website AskArt and others call her Florence Abbey Parsell. I don't know where that name comes from or whether it is correct. In 1951, Florence married Jesse Orweiler Covell of Angola, and they resided on his farm until his death in 1957. Florence Parsell Covell survived him by more than two decades and died on September 14, 1978, in Angola. She was buried at Circle Hill Cemetery in the city of her birth.

Art teacher, painter, and illustrator Florence G. Parsell in her natural environment, a high school classroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1943.

I wonder if Florence's students of 1943 knew that she once looked like this: from a school program at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1917. (Photograph from the Chicago Tribune.)

And only a few years before, she was prim and proper, although that last part--"We have also found her a very delightful entertainer"--may have meant more than meets the eye. (Photograph from the Angola High School Spectator, 1909.)

An example of Florence Parsell's artwork, from The Spectator (1907), and just right for a Christmas season of 106 years later.

Revised and updated on December 6, 2019.
Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Frank Snapp (1876-1927)

Son of a blacksmith, Frank Snapp was born on March 19, 1876, in Princeton, Indiana. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and worked in Detroit, New York City, and Chicago as an illustrator of books, newspapers, and magazines. His illustrations were published in "Yours Truly" and One Hundred Other Original Drawings (Judge, 1908), The Long Arm of Mannister by E. Phillips Oppenheim (1908), Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers (1913), and other novels throughout the 1910s and 1920s. Some if not all of those were reprints from magazine and newspaper serials. Frank Snapp was a member of the Society of Illustrators from 1910 onward and was employed by the Charles Everett Johnson Studio for many years. His coworkers there included McClelland Barclay (1891-1942), Andrew Loomis (1892-1959), Harry Timmins (1887-1963), and a young Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976), who went on to fame by painting images of Santa Claus for Coca-Cola. Frank Snapp died on March 12, 1927, a week before his fifty-first birthday, and was buried in his hometown.

Indiana artist Frank Snapp worked during the Golden Age of Illustration in America when images like this one appeared weekly in newspapers and magazines. The illustration is for Maude Radford Warren's story "The Man Who Was Lost." It was printed more than a century ago, before the Great War, which abounded in images of men in military dress and women in candy-striped nurse's outfits.  

Here's a Frank Snapp illustration from an unknown source, dated 1908. The figures are a little stiff and conventional, a far cry from . . . 

This image from The Brute by Frederic Arnold Kummer (1912), dated just two years later (note "1910" in the upper right corner). The difference? The second image was obviously drawn from life, whereas the first may have been a work mostly of the imagination. Snapp won awards for his watercolors, a technique on full display here if only in black and white.  

Here is an undated watercolor or gouache painting, in color but curiously lacking in vibrancy.

I'll close with a far more colorful and accomplished work repeating the motif of the red parasol and the woman in the garden. Both are undated.

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from

Indiana Illustrators and Hoosier Cartoonists!

Art by Franklin Booth