My Retro Reads: October 2019

October 28, 2019

"Gus Was a Friendly Ghost" by Jane Thayer, illustrated by Seymour Fleishman (1961)

SEYMOUR FLEISHMAN (1918 - 2012) was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago between 1935 and 1941, and then served with the U.S. Army in Australia and New Guinea during World War II, where he was a cartographer and illustrator. After the war, Fleishman returned to Chicago and worked as an artist in the promotional department of the Chicago Sun for three years. He married Esther Marcussen, the Sun's out-of-town circulation manager, in 1946, and the couple had two daughters.

Fleishman illustrated his first children's book, Helen Lobdell's Golden Conquest, in 1953. He subsequently illustrated more than 60 other children's books, including five that he also wrote. Perhaps his most famous illustrations were those of "Gus the Friendly Ghost," who was the star of a popular book series by Jane Thayer.

"Gus Was a Friendly Ghost" by Jane Thayer, illustrated by Seymour Fleishman (1961)

October 21, 2019

"Space Witch" written & illustrated by Don Freeman (1959)

DON FREEMAN (1908 - 1978) as born in San Diego, California. He attended high school in St. Louis, Missouri. Freeman to New York City, following his fellow trumpet playing brother Harold, where Don found a job playing trumpet in a production of “The Beautiful People” at the Lyceum Theater.
Don studied graphic design and lithography at the Art Students League with Ashcan artist John Sloan and Harry Wickey. In 1930 he finished his first complete lithograph and, in 1931, found professional lithographer George C. Miller’s 14^th Street studio. He worked with Miller for many years.
Freeman's subjects included Broadway theater, politics, and the circus. He was known for carrying a sketchbook with him wherever he went. His images depicted New York City, and the faces of the people he observed on the streets, in the theaters, and in the subways. They often included images of showgirls, Bowery Boys, drunks, apple sellers, window washers and numerous citizens of the city that were down on their luck. Freeman was also a jazz musician and the brother of hotel entrepreneur Warren Freeman.
When Freeman lived in New York City during the 1930s, 40s and early 1950s, he was a brilliant illustrator of city life in the best traditions of Social Realism. His subjects were the actors and actresses of Broadway—from Orson Welles to Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne to the man in the street or the charwomen who scrubbed the stage after the actors and the audience went home. His cartoons and other illustrations appeared regularly in the New York Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Theater Magazine. Freeman also self-published Don Freeman's Newsstand, a short-lived quarterly magazine, each page of which was an original lithograph.
As Freeman's career progressed, he lightened his palette and depicted more upbeat subjects. In 1951, he began illustrating children's books. His wife, Lydia, who was also an accomplished artist, authored some of the books Freeman illustrated. Don Freeman was first introduced to children's literature when William Saroyan asked him to illustrate several books. However, his greatest influence came from the artist Honoré Daumier. Freeman studied many of Daumier's works as well as possessing a large collection of books on the artist.
Throughout Don Freeman's career he was the writer and illustrator of more than 20 children's books. He is best known for his publication of Corduroy. Although he came up with many of his ideas on his own, his wife Lydia Freeman contributed greatly to his success; indeed, she co-wrote two books with him, Chuggy and the Blue Caboose and Pet of the Met.
The Freemans eventually moved to Santa Barbara, California, where they spent the remainder of their lives. Don Freeman died in Santa Barbara on January 1, 1978.
In 1976, Freeman was recognized by the City of New York for his body of work portraying the city. The New York Daily News reported on the Citation from Mayor Abraham D. Beame, which was presented to Freeman at the opening of a one-man retrospective exhibition.In a measure of Freeman's national fame, The Christian Science Monitor covered the 1976 exhibition, as well as a 1978 retrospective, both of which showcased Freeman's drawings, oils, prints, and his limited-edition self-published periodical, Don Freeman's Newsstand.

October 7, 2019

"Andersen's Fairy Tales" by Hans Christian Andersen, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard, 1954

LEONARD WEISGARD (1916 - 2000) Leonard Weisgard was a Caldecott award-winning illustrator of more than 200 children’s books and was perhaps best known for his collaboration with the author Margaret Wise Brown.
Weisgard was born in New Haven, Connecticut but spent much of his early childhood in England, where his father originally came from. His interest in the quality of children’s books began after his family moved back to the USA when he was 8. As a schoolboy in New York, he was dissatisfied with the books supplied by the public schools he attended. He found the illustrations monotonous and thought that the world could not be all that dreary and limited to only one color.
He went on to study art at the Pratt Institute and the New School for Social Research, where he was influenced by primitive cave paintings, Gothic and Renaissance art and avant-garde French illustrators of children’s books of the 1920s.

Leonard Weisgard also studied dance with Martha Graham and worked in the field of window display. He began his career making illustrations for magazines such as Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar.

His first book, Suki the Siamese Pussy, was published in 1937, and his first collaboration with Brown was two years later, The Noisy Book. He won the 1948 Caldecott Medal for U.S. picture book illustration, recognizing The Little Island, written by Brown. They collaborated again on The Important Book, published by Harper & Brothers in 1949. Altogether, Weisgard illustrated at least 14 of Brown's books, including two that were published posthumously.

He used a wide range of colors and media in his books, including gouache, poster paint, crayon, chalk, decoupage, stenciling and pen and ink.