Comments on: J.C. Leyendecker: America’s “Other” Illustrator

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:32:41 +0000

I’m reading Norman Rockwell’s autobiography right now and he has nothing but nice things to say about Leyendecker and his brother Frank. He says that it was JC’s natural reclusiveness and the “wall” that his male companion and business partner created between JC and the rest of the world that destroyed his talent. He also blames JC’s need for money that prevented him from taking challenging, but less lucrative illustration jobs.
He says: “Now that Joe isolated himself from life, his work became even emptier than before. You can’t do human interest pictures from an ivory tower.”
The way he writes about it, it all sounds very tragic. Both JC and his brother Frank died sad deaths and almost no one came to their funerals.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:26:05 +0000

Brandon, thanks for the links to your photos! Great resource!

By: Charley Parker

Charley Parker — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 15:23:39 +0000

Thanks, Brandon! Really makes me hope the show comes to the east coast.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:07:25 +0000

Great post. I went to the show in question, and snapped as many pictures as I could. I’m no photographer, but if anyone wants to take a look:

http://fetalgrindings.com/leyendecker

By: Sergio

Sergio — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 18:30:30 +0000

the work of leyendecker is awesome, thanks for showing the works of this wonderful artist here.

By: Li-An

Li-An — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:42:08 +0000

I find his work very modern. It’s clean and sharp and very efficient. This qualities were maybe not appreciated in the 50’s/70’s but I think it could have a nice come back.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:41:55 +0000

Compared to Rockwell’s later work, Leyendecker’s work was indeed a bit cold. JC used people as design elements in his work, which is one the reasons his compositions are so strong. As an example, think of Rockwell’s SEP cover where the two cleaning ladies are looking over the theater program–that’s a highly sympathetic theme. I don’t see anything like that in JC’s work, although I love his stuff like everybody else.

Outside of Maxfield Parrish, Rockwell, and maybe a couple of others, none of the great golden Age illustrators is well known today. I don’t think that Leyendecker’s reclusiveness has anything to do with his realtive obscurity–it didn’t hurt him in his prime. Its just that the general public has moved on to television and movies for visual entertainment. Their loss.

The Cutler’s, who own the Museum of American Illustration in Rhode Island, are working on a catalog raisonne of Leyendecker’s work. How long that will take to come out is hard to tell, but probably ten years at the most, five at the least. Anyway, way too long. I love the work, and I wish I could see the show. Nice post.

By: Charley Parker

Charley Parker — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 13:50:10 +0000

Thank you both for contributing to the discussion. I appreciate it.

I think it’s well established that Leyendecker was gay, which may explain his desire to keep out of the public eye at the time, but I don’t think that accounts for his relative obscutiry compared to Rockwell.

Perhaps it is actually the sophistication of his work that made it less accessible to middle America after the war, or possibly accociation of the recognizable style of his work with a particular era.

I can see where criticisms of coldness might come from, he was so overwhelmingly facile, and his technique was so dazzling that it could overpower the subject matter.

I really hope the show comes east, but I appreciate having a report on it.

By: Nail

Nail — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 05:32:37 +0000

(Another long-time lurker’s 1st comment…)

I went to the exhibition last weekend - pretty much all paintings showing on Haggin’s website were included. It was a great experience, there were more people than I expected, the crowd loved his works and I was surprised that some visitors knew about Leyendecker very well. All the prints I’ve seen before did not do him justice…the originals were stunning to look at.

By: Ginger Pena

Ginger Pena — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:22:33 +0000

Thanks for all your updates, Charlie! I visit your site often, but this is the first time for a comment.

I recently checked a book about Leyendecker out of my local library and was surprised to read that although Norman Rockwell looked up to J.C. Leyendecker early on, later he became disenchanted with him. There just isn’t much information on Leyendecker’s personal life since he was so reclusive, and I surmise that Rockwell’s disenchantment stemmed from his frustrated desire to get to know J. C. There’s also a hint that perhaps Leyendecker was gay since his closest companion was another man. I think Rockwell thought so because he criticised J.C.’s illustrations of women for their dispassionate coldness: A quality I think he imagined, because I don’t see that.

Mostly, I think Leyendecker’s lack of continued popularity is just due to his reclusiveness, although Rockwell’s later comments didn’t help. He was never accessible, never experimented with other styles, never promoted his work except to publishers. And his work almost seems inhuman: It’s just too good.

Maybe there’s a lesson in this for all us artists? Great work isn’t enough - although that’s the place to start from and the goal I keep working toward - One needs to promote the work and become an accessible personality for the public to connect with.