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

Marian Crane (1903-1982)

Marian Crane was born on December 19, 1903, in Crawfordsville, a small city once known as "the Athens of Indiana." Marian came from a prominent family. Her father, Benjamin Crane, was a lawyer. Her maternal grandfather, John Lyle Campbell (1827-1904), was a professor of astronomy and physics at Wabash College and according to the book Montgomery County Remembers (1976), "the man generally credited with having suggested the Centennial celebration of the United States in 1876." Marian Crane's mother was Mary F. Campbell Crane (1867-1943), a musician and a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Indiana Pioneers, and the local history society.

Marian Crane married James Jamieson Paterson (1899-1972) in 1927, the same year in which he began teaching economics at Wabash College. The following year, Marian drew a map of her home city (below), emphasizing landmarks associated with the college. (Note the drawing of a young woman at the bottom center of the map. The legend reads: "To Greencastle and Bloomington and the Co-eds." For those who don't know it, Wabash was and still is an all-male college.) In 1976, the Montgomery County Historical Society and the Crawfordsville Community Bicentennial Committee published Marian's map in the book Montgomery County Remembers. An image of the map appears below. As you might guess, the map forms the endpapers of the book.

Marian Crane Paterson died in February 1982 in Philadelphia and was buried in Crawfordsville.

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

The Underground Railroad

Charles T. Webber (1825-1911) was not an Indiana artist, nor is his painting, "The Underground Railroad," set in Indiana. However, two of Webber's subjects, Levi Coffin (1798-1877) and his wife, Catherine White Coffin, were Hoosiers, having lived in Indiana from 1826 to 1847. Coffin's house, located in Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana, was a way station on the Underground Railroad and is now a National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. For his work, Coffin was considered "the President of the Underground Railroad."

Artist Charles T. Webber, born on Christmas Day, 1825, in Cayuga County, New York, was a well known and accomplished artist in his adopted home city of Cincinnati. He painted "The Underground Railroad" to commemorate the work of the Coffins and other abolitionists. Webber considered the painting to be his masterpiece and exhibited it at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. That would make this year the 120th anniversary of "The Underground Railroad." The Cincinnati Art Museum acquired the painting after Webber's death in 1911 and holds it in their collections. So is it illustration or is it fine art? If illustration contains a narrative and fine art does not, then isn't most if not all art illustration? Does the distinction really matter?

Text copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley