A HANDSOME HAND AT DRAWING

When I walked into Robin Lauersdorf's booth at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in 2022 my jaw nearly dropped to the floor. Here at last was a visual artist that was creating something truly dynamic with pencils, something that I could see myself trying to create, or wanting to create at least, assuming of course that I had anywhere near the skills and imagination that was needed to do so.

Lauersdorf's meticulously drawn, "Escher" inspired graphite illustrations are filled with playful illusion, and practically burst three-dimensionally from of each piece of deceptively taped down paper. They are remarkable too in that they are precisely detailed, yet non-cluttered and cleanly rendered. My wife immediately sensed that I was going to buy one of his prints, and she was right! --so instead she gifted me one as a birthday present. Oh, let me count the ways!

 

This, out of the more than a dozen pieces on display, was the one I chose. They were certainly more imaginative ones in Lauersdorf's booth, but this particular one, which happened to be one of his earliest drawings in the "Escher" mode, was just too attractive to pass up considering my affinity for sculptures, statues, and statuettes. It felt inspirational as well, which manifested itself with my enrolling in several drawing and painting classes since its acquisition.

Lauersdorf explained the history behind his so called "Self Portrait" this way: "Often, I am asked how I do my drawings, so I decided to create a drawing that illustrates my process. I didn’t realize how successful the illusion was until an older gentleman came up to me at an art fair and discreetly told me that I had accidentally left my photograph taped to my drawing! At first, I thought he was joking, but I had actually fooled him into thinking the drawing was real. This incident opened my eyes into the ways I could play with reality in my pencil drawings—the gentleman had a much greater impact on my career than he will ever realize!"
 

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I almost bought this print too that day, and now wished I would have. But as fortune would have it prints of this drawing and most of his other works are still readily available through Lauersdorf's website, priced between $50 and $100 dollars (a link to it can be found further down this page). The image area of each print is 15 x 20 inches in size, although I think larger ones can be ordered. His original works vary in actual size and are priced between $4K and $18K. The above piece is called "Waiting For My Ship To Come In", and its backstory is interesting: First Lauersdorf had to build an actual model to photograph so he could get the lighting and shadows correct. It began by wrapping coat-hangars with paper towels and tin foil to replicate the Kraken's tentacles, and bending each one to where they would be the most effective at reinforcing a three-dimensional illusion. Then the actual drawing began, starting with preliminary sketches. After several weeks, perhaps as much as two or three months, the final drawing was completed. As you can see, Lauersdorf has brilliantly included just the right amount of details to further the illusion that the Kraken was actually pulling the ship off the paper and into the water underneath. Also among the amazing details are a floating barrel of rum, and three sailors: one rowing a boat, one seized by a tentacle, and one swimming away from a shark.


BELOW are a few more of Lauersdorf's finished creations, including a framed print of one of his many advantageous "University Drawings", showcasing its unique potential for alumni.

While visiting Lauersdorf's website, I found this informative statement from him: 

"To many artists, drawing is used as a preliminary means to an end. Through years of meticulous work, I have tried to show that the pencil can be used as an art form in itself.

Through close observation, I render my graphite pencil drawings as detailed and realistic as possible. Without the use of color, my drawings must stand on design and value alone. Opposed to pen and ink, pencil allows me to obtain all of the subtle values ranging from very light to very dark. Charcoal, being very soft, doesn’t allow for fine details.

My subject matter often varies. I find that anything is interesting to draw as long as I can be creative in the designing of the piece. The designing process can take longer than the actual drawing itself. Because of the detail, which I try to achieve, my drawings can take up to three months before I feel satisfied. Like most artists, I have a vision of what I want to draw and must research, photograph and sketch until I have illustrated what I envision.

Ideas for my drawings come in many forms. In par­ticular, I have always been inspired by the work of MC Escher. Many of my pieces play with reality and illusion like his did. I also create drawings of colleges and universities across the nation that allow alumni to display their pride in their institution." 

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Here's a beautiful painting I came across that speaks to Lauersdorf's broader output, and complete mastery of mixed media.

If you would like to order prints or buy an original piece of art from Robin Lauersdorf, you can do so through his personal website. He also has a 12" X 12" hardback book of his art available for sale, titled Wishful Thinking. It highlights 31 drawings intricately explained across 88 pages. It represents 15 years of the man's artistic life, offering insights into the inspirations and challenges behind each drawing. The cost is $74.
 

M. C. Escher's famous "Drawing Hands", seen above, is what helped inspire Lauersdorf and countless other professional artists and illustrators. It was drawn in 1948 when Escher was 50 years old.  

Escher was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints (monochrome prints), many of which were influenced by his love of mathematics. Escher was born in 1898, but it wasn't until very late in his life that he garnered any real attention from the art world. In 1970 he received his first retrospective exhibition, sadly though just two years before his death at the age of 73. After his passing he became widely appreciated by everyone, from publishers to comic illustrators and fine artists. Since then his artwork has been seen repeatedly on book covers, albums, magazines and possibly even advertisements. 


BELOW are a few "Escher" inspired book covers from other artists, and one preceding 1948 that may have actually inspired Escher!

The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake was published in hardback by Harper & Brothers in 1938. The jacket art was produced by Leo Manso. Manso created jacket art for most of the major hardback publishers from the 1930s on, adding paperback houses to his client list in the mid-1940s. At some point later in his life he taught art at the Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art, and also at Columbia University and New York University. As a fine artist he was noted especially for his colorful abstract paintings.

 
'A wickedly brilliant plot underscores this murder-mystery in that rare find---a really original contribution to detective fiction. It is the story of a father who dedicates himself to finding and killing the road-hog who murdered his son. And it is told in cultivated prose, with the subtlety and deftness that mark Nicholas Blake (the pseudonym of C. Day Lewis) as a writer of achieved standing. A remarkable English prose has already stamped THE BEAST MUST DIE as a good novel and an extraordinarily good thriller, and the best of Mr. Blake's four detective novels.'

On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming was published in hardback by Jonathan Cape of London in 1961. Richard Chopping produced the jacket art. He was a British illustrator and author of natural history and children's books. His most famous covers however are those that he did for Ian Fleming's James Bond spy thrillers, between 1957 and 1966. There were nine altogether, all similarly executed in Chopper's realistic, three-dimensional, trompe-l'oeil style.

"It was one of those Septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end..." But it did end and winter came in a lethal welter of mystery, bloodshed and multiple death amidst the snow. this, the eleventh chapter in the biography of James Bond, is one of the longest. It is also the most enthralling. Really the most? Really the most.'

A Day in the Life was edited by Gardner Dozois and published in paperback by Perennial in 1973. The cover art was produced by Roger Zimmerman. Zimmerman was a graphic designer and collage artist, who worked primarily for Doubleday producing jacket art on their science fiction and fantasy hardback lineup between 1962 and 1982. Other than that not much can be said about him. Doziois, on the other hand, is, or rather was (he died in 2018), well known in the SFF world as an editor, author, and popular convention goer and guest. In preparation for this post I recently read at the website Black-Gate an interesting article about SFF anthology editing. Here's what Dozois had to say about the above book:  "My very first book actually was an anthology, a reprint anthology called A DAY IN THE LIFE, all the way back in 1970. Even today, it’s almost unheard of for an unknown new writer to be able to sell an anthology, particularly a prestigious hardcover anthology. I managed it, I think, because of the slush-reading work I was doing, which was getting good word-of-mouth in the tight little SF publishing world of the time, because of the cachet of being a “hot new writer,” and because of some of the social contacts I’d made. Victoria Schochet, for instance, I knew socially, from parties and conventions, and she’d just taken over as the new editor of the SF line at Harper & Row, and, in keeping with the revolutionary nature of the times, wanted new and exciting kinds of books to revolutionize and perhaps radicalize her line. I proposed a Hot New Anthology to her, and, since I was a Hot New Writer, and so theoretically tapped into the Zeitgeist, she bought it. A DAY IN THE LIFE has been out of print for decades, but it is now available for reading again, as an ebook from Baen."

Contents:
Introduction (1972) - essay by Gardner Dozois.
Slow Tuesday Night (1965) - short story by R. A. Lafferty.
The Lady Margaret (1966) - novelette by Keith Roberts.
Mary (1964) - novelette by Damon Knight.
Driftglass (1967) - short story by Samuel R. Delany.
A Happy Day in 2381 (1970) - short story by Robert Silverberg.
This Moment of the Storm (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny.
The Haunted Future (1959) - novelette by Fritz Leiber.
On the Storm Planet (1965) - novella by Cordwainer Smith.

How to Draw What You See was published by Watson Guptill of New York in 1972, and it has been reprinted several times since. The jacket art, text, and all interior illustrations were produced by Rudy de Reyna. De Reyna was born in Spain and educated there, as well as in England, Mexico, and the United States. He began his career by producing movie posters and displays for Hollywood studios. After that he moved to Westport, Connecticut to teach fine art at the Famous Artists School. Eventually he settled in Sandwich, Massachusetts (Cape Cod), where he continued to produce both fine art and commercial art, and devise additional instructional books for art students.

'Everyone wishes that he could faithfully reproduce the world around him--wishes that he could draw what he sees. Here is a book that teaches you how.
    Rudy de Reyna believes that there are only four basic shapes in nature--the cube, the cylinder, the cone, and the sphere. Every object is based on one of these geometric shapes, although the shape itself may be greatly modified. Once you can see the basic shape of an object, you can draw that object no matter how much detail it may contain.
    The author devotes Part One of his book to the fundamentals of drawing. In clear, concise, and lavishly illustrated projects--which the reader is encouraged to try out for himself--de Reyna presents the basic structure of objects, eye level, perspective, and putting basic forms to gether. The projects in Part one are arranged so that each one is slightly more complex than the one before, and deal with such drawing principles as the horizon plane, light and shade, translating local color to black and white, drawing with charcoal, drawing a still life, drawing outdoors, drawing the figure, and drawing children.
    In Part Two, the author explains the use of media not usually described in a book on drawing. The reader learns how to "draw" in painting media like wash (transparent watercolor), opaque watercolor, and acrylic, which are used here only in their black and white forms. De Reyna discusses each medium--wash, opaque, and acrylic--separately and carefully details the materials needed for working in each one. He presents the basic techniques of each medium and provides exercises to help the student gain proficiency in handling them. Then, in detailed step-by-step demonstrations the author renders still lifes, landscapes, and portraits in each medium, putting into practice all the techniques that he has described.
    The author also explains the use of ink for rendering landscapes. He shows how interesting effects can be created by using several different media in one drawing. And de Reyna stresses the importance of choosing the most suitable medium.
    Throughout the projects, de Reyna shares with the reader his many interesting experiences as an artist and teacher. The author's illustrations appear on virtually every page. 176 pages. 7x10. Over 200 b&w illustrations. Index.'
 

One Man Show by Michael Innes (aka J. I. M. Stewart) was published in paperback by Perennial in 1983. Irving Freeman produced the cover art. Freeman is a graphic designer and illustrator who produced scores of book and magazine covers and advertising art in the late 20th century for clients such as Harper Collins, William Morrow, Perennial, Simon & Schuster, Pfizer, Major League Baseball, NBC-TV, New York Times and New York Magazine, among others. He studied under Arthur Foster, the son of the great Hal Foster, at the Art Students League in New York City, and also at Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England, and the School of Visual Arts in NYC.

'Sir John Appleby of Scotland Yard is unwittingly swept up into an imbroglio with the smart set when he attends a private gallery opening with his wife and in an astonishing course of events deals with paintings stolen from an aristocrat's mansion, a mad chase, and of course, the inevitable murder.'

"ONE MAN SHOW begins with a stunning description of a lecture by Mervyn Twist, the art critic, to a group of people in the gallery where the show opening takes place. The account of the facial expressions of the listeners is a marvel, and the ensuing events live up to this flourish of virtuosity... Innes' undoubted masterpiece." --- Jacques Barzun & Wendell Hertig Taylor, A Catalogue of Crime.

This charming illustration, an oil on canvas approximately 28" X 19" in size, was produced by Birney Lettick. Lettick attended Yale University Art School, where, along with being taught the basic fundamentals of a classic art education, he learned anatomy by actually dissecting cadavers (ew!). Lettick was primarily a commercial artist and art teacher for most of his life, working in advertising and publishing where he graced many a popular magazine and bestselling book. His satiric covers for The National Lampoon have become the stuff of legend. He was also one heckuva movie poster artist, and some of the biggest grossing films of the 1970's and 80's can at least in some part be attributed to his deft hand. 

[© February, 2024, Jeffersen]

 

The COVER ART of the EARLY AMERICAN FRONTIER. Part Two: THE DEERSLAYER by James Fenimore Cooper

A few years ago a local tinnitus clinic ran a TV commercial where the medical director, Dr. Julie, stated her favorite movie was Legends of the Fall. It always made me chuckle when it aired. Not that there is anything wrong with Legends of the Fall being her favorite movie, because really, there isn't, but it strikes me as funny that we all have to have a favorite of everything. A favorite television series, book, song, car, color, animal, restaurant and sports team. Heck, even a favorite fishing hole. And of course half the fun of having a favorite is sharing it with others (except the location of our favorite fishing hole, ha ha).

My favorite movie is probably Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans. Before that it was John Carpenter's remake of The Thing. Obviously these are two entirely different adventure films, one based on real aspects of early American history, and one based entirely on science fiction---but that's me, I'm all over the place with my likes.

I read The Last of the Mohicans long before I saw Mann's film, along with The Deerslayer, another frontier themed novel from American writer James Fenimore Cooper. These two books, and The Pioneers, The Prairie, and The Pathfinder, comprise Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales. They are all, or mostly all, set in the "eighteenth-century era of development in the primarily former Iroquois areas in central New York State."

Each novel features frontiersman Nathanial "Natty" Bumppo, or "Hawkeye," as he was more commonly called in most of the tales, so nicknamed because of his exceptional marksmanship with a long rifle. The French called him "la Longue Carabine'" for the same reason. He also is referred to as "Deerslayer," "Leatherstocking," and "Pathfinder."

The publication history of each Leatherstocking novel is as follows:
 
1823:  The Pioneers, The Sources of the Susquehanna; A Descriptive Tale 
1826:  The Last of the Mohicans, A Narrative of 1757
1827:  The Prairie, A Tale 
1840:  The Pathfinder, The Inland Sea  
1841:  The Deerslayer, The First War Path 

Chronologically, the Tales, or Bumppo's journey, actually follow this linear path instead:

The Deerslayer --- story dates: 1740-1755.
The Last of the Mohicans --- story dates: 1757.
The Pathfinder --- story dates: 1758-1759.
The Pioneers --- story dates: 1793.
The Prairie --- story dates: 1804-1806.

However, this span does not correspond with the actual dates of the historical events described in the series. If they did then Bumppo would be 100 years old when he traveled to the Kansas plains in The Prairie, and he obviously wasn't.

I was just a teenager when I read the two aforementioned books, but I was also starting to backpack every summer into various wilderness areas in the Rocky Mountains. As I hiked I often thought of myself as Hawkeye, quietly making my way through the forest on moccasin feet. If I startled a wild animal it just added to my imagination. Other books that entered in my thoughts were Eckert's The Frontiersmen and Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.

This is my brother Jim and I in 1977, backpacking up the Little Snake River in the Route National Forest in Colorado. Our advanced gear would have made Hawkeye drool. My backpack was a Kelty and Jim's was a JanSport; both were considered premier equipment at the time. My tent (the yellow stuff bag) was a Sierra Designs 2-Man A-Frame, and at 6 pounds it was the lightest tent money could buy. My sleeping bag was a goose-down filled Holubar, which I still use today, and Jim's was a JanSport. Our sleeping pads are 4 inch foam, and we bought them at the Army Surplus store for ten bucks. I believe I pioneered their use in backpacking, not that I've seen anyone else ever use them. Today they cost around $130. Our fishing rods are Eagle Claw Trailmasters, which break down into 4 pieces for easy packing. The rifle is a working replica of a Hawken 50 caliber muzzle-loading flintlock, and we took turns carrying it. This, out of all our gear, was the closest to what Hawkeye would have carried in the 18th century without getting too particular. It weighed about 10-12 pounds. 

The photos, now faded with age, were taken with a German made Rollei 35. It is a 35mm miniature viewfinder camera, with an insertable lens, one of the smallest and lightest cameras that were available in the 1970s, and ideal for backpacking. It no longer works because one day I dropped it in a river. I even wasted money trying to get it repaired. Now it's just a shiny piece of memorabilia sitting in my office.

This still photo is from the two-part, 1920 German film, Lederstrumpf (The Deerslayer). Hawkeye is played by Emil Mamelok, and Chingachgook is played by Bela Lugosi. The second part is called Der Letzte der Mohikaner (The Last of the Mohicans).

The Deerslayer was filmed seven other times:

1913: starring Harry T. Morey and Wallace Reid.
1943: starring Bruce Kellogg and Jean Parker. 
1957: starring Lex Barker and Carlos Rivas. 
1967: starring Rolf Romer and Gojko Mitic.
1978: starring Steve Forrest and Ned Romero (made for TV).
1990: a Russian language production.

In 1994 a syndicated series aired on television that was loosely based on the Leatherstocking Tales. It was called Hawkeye, and it starred Lee Horsley as Bumppo (Hawkeye has never been so handsome!), Rodney A. Grant as Chingachgook, Duncan Fraser as Colonel Munro, and Lynda Carter of Wonder Woman fame as Elizabeth Shields. It lasted one season.

Here's the cloth edition of The Deerslayer that I read first before reading The Last of the Mohicans. It's not dated, but it is probably circa 1923. It is the size of a vintage paperback, and about as plain as plain gets, with no illustrations and only a marginally decorated cover, title page and endpages. I loved it nevertheless, it's the book that essentially led me to frontier fiction, a genre I still enjoy and read often, and it helped reinforce my passion and awe for the wilderness, and especially for the deciduous woodlands of America's northeast.

As stated earlier, chronologically The Deerslayer (hereafter referred to as TD) is the first installment in the Leatherstocking series. While The Last of the Mohicans tells the story of Natty Bumppo, then known as Hawkeye, and his friends Chingachgook and Uncas during the French and Indian War, TD takes place seventeen years earlier, in 1740, in what is now become New York State, and it is essentially Bumppo's maturation story, where he learns to fight and kill, tempered though he may be with a romantics virtuousness. In essence, Bumppo grows into the frontier version of the chivalric ideal, something that Cooper was no doubt striving to create from the very start of the series, now of course fully realized in this, the last book he wrote in the series.

OTSEGO LAKE, NY (Fall 2023)

OTSEGO LAKE by American Painter LOUIS REMY MIGNOT (circa 1850)

Most of the action in TD takes place around Otsego Lake, or Lake Glimmerglass, as it is called by the characters in the book. This 4,046-acre lake is the source of the Susquehanna River. The village of Cooperstown, which was founded by James's father William Cooper in 1785, is situated at the lake's southern end, and as of today it has a population of 1,867. The name Otsego comes from a Mohawk or Oneida word meaning "place of the rock", referring to the large boulder near the lake's outlet, today known as Council Rock. TD also introduces the Mohican tribesman, Chingachgook, assuming of course that we haven't read any of the other books, and sets up, in effect, the title itself of the next chronological tale, The Last of the Mohicans.

Most folks who try to read TD don't last ten pages; it's verbose to the point of being almost tedious, especially when compared to the concision that makes up most of today's modern fiction. But Cooper's prose can also do marvelous things with action scenes and ambience, and although Mark Twain hilariously never forgave Cooper for his excessive wordiness, I can and do---after all, I bit my teeth on the purple prose of 19th and early 20th century high-fantasy, so staying engrossed with Cooper has never been a problem. TD, and indeed all of the Leatherstocking Tales, will artfully conjure up a place, time, and culture that is so far removed from what most of us know as to be considered almost pure fantasy. TD is also, in its own unique way, a strong ode to nature's wonder. It is that aspect that impressed me the most as a young reader.

John Wesley Jarvis painted this portrait of James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) in 1822. The English born Jarvis (1780-1839) was one of the premier portrait painters in New York City during first quarter of the 19th century.

When a bronze statue is made in someone's honor I guess you know they've become important to somebody. And yet Cooperstown, NY, where this statue of Cooper has sat nobly since 1940, has become more of a mecca for baseball fans than book fans, so most folks on their way to the National Baseball Hall of Fame just walk past it with no more than a curious glance. The statue was sculpted by Italian emigrate Victor Salvatore (1884-1964), who also sculpted the town's "Sandlot Kid," which stands outside Doubleday Field. I don't have to tell you which one warrants more attention, and selfies.

THE FIRST edition of the The Deerslayer was published 1841 in two volumes by Lea & Blanchard of Philadelphia. I believe all of the Tales may have been published by Lea initially but I'm not sure if any of them were actually illustrated. Two of the first acknowledged illustrators that came later were American artist Felix Octavius Carr ("F. O. C") Darley (1822-1988), and Italian/Polish artist and architect Michal Elwiro Andriolli (1836-1893).  

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This is the frontis and title page from a D. Appleton & Company (NY) hardback edition, dated 1873. The illustrations were produced by Felix Darley.  The self taught Darley became fairly prolific over the course of his professional life; for Cooper alone he produced an astonishing 350 illustrations. He also illustrated many well-known other 19th century authors, including Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Clement Moore, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Edgar Allan Poe. Darley's home, a Victorian mansion located in Claymont, Delaware, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

This is an illustration by Andriolli, one of several that were contained in an 1897 edition of TD. Andriolli was a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Art in Petersberg. He participated in the 1860s Polish uprising against Russian rule and was arrested twice, escaping once and being deported once. Eventually, in quieter times, he made his way back to Warsaw and became one of the most renown illustration makers and architects of his time.

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IN 1925, Charles Scribner's Sons of New York published what many consider to be the definitive edition of TD. It certainly has endured for decades, and is probably still in print somewhere around the world. To understand this edition's popularity look no further than the illustrations provided by N. C. Wyeth. He produced a full-color dustjacket (Hawkeye tied to a tree), a full-color paste-down on the front cloth board (shown above), a full-color title page, and nine other full-page, full-color plates (shown below). Since the beginning Wyeth's artwork has been met with widespread acceptance, almost as if the brush he held were a magic wand. And in some ways it was.

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I've never seen one of Wyeth's original Deerslayer paintings, but I have seen a few other paintings by him that were displayed in museums, so I know there is a greater level of values and detail in each of these pieces that's not coming through in their reproductions.

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THIS 1926 Harper & Brothers/Blue Ribbon Books edition of The Deerslayer was published in direct competition with the Scribner edition. Frank Schoonover produced the cover illustration, showing the character Hurry Harry about to toss a full grown man into the water---not an easy thing to do even if you are Fess Parker in your prime.

Frank Schoonover (1877-1972) studied under Howard Pyle at the Drexler Institute. Like his mentor, Schoonover was a stickler for authenticity, often making field trips across America and Canada and even into foreign lands in order to observe firsthand people, places and things. It showed in his artwork, which were filled with authoritative images of Indians, frontiersmen, trappers, cowboys, pirates and everyday working people. In a career which spanned decades he produced over 5,000 paintings, which graced many a magazine and book, and in his later years he gave art lessons, establishing a small art school in his Delaware studio. The Ojibways, whom he met while visiting the frozen Canadian North, proudly gave him the Indian name, "Miss-a-nog-a-neegan," the picture-making man, and made him a blood brother of the tribe.

While Schoonover was in the process of painting this cover he received a letter from A. W. Rushmore, the Vice President of Harper & Brothers, who wrote: "I have just received a note from Louis Rhead calling my attention to the fact that N.C. Wyeth is doing a "Deerslayer" for Scribner, to come out next year. This will give us an interesting opportunity to make a comparison of yours and Wyeth's treatment, and I know in advance which will be best. Enclosed is a clipping notice of the Scribner edition. Do your darnedest, old skeezix."

Oddly enough, the interior illustrations were drawn by a different artist, Louis Rhead. But I guess it's not so odd when you consider that this was the sixteenth volume that Rhead illustrated for Harper---he obviously held their confidence. Some of his other titles were Tom Brown's School Days, Bold Robin Hood and his Outlaw Band, Treasure Island, Arabian Nights Entertainments, Kidnapped, and Swiss Family Robinson. Above is the title page of the 1926 Harper & Brothers/Blue Ribbon Books edition. 

Louis Rhead (1857-1926) was a graduate of the National Art Training School in London. In 1883 at the age of twenty-four, Rhead was offered a position as Art Director at D. Appleton Publishing in New York City. He accepted and immediately emigrated to America. Rhead, in addition to becoming a prolific book and poster illustrator, was an avid fly-fisherman. To supplement his income he sold tackle and his own line of artificial flies. His book, American Trout-Stream Insects (1916), was one of the first and most comprehensive studies of stream entomology ever published in America. Rhead's premature death involving his passion for fishing was unusual to say the least; he set out to catch a 30-pound monster turtle which had been devastating trout ponds on his place, Seven Oaks. He fought the turtle for more than half an hour, exhausting himself in the process. A short time later he suffered his first attack. Days later he had his second. This one proved fatal.

'James Fenimore Cooper's masterpiece is the latest addition to the famous Louis Rhead juvenile classics, which now includes sixteen volumes. Here is a story which has held countless young Americans spellbound---an immortal distillation of all the romance and drama and wild beauty of Indian life. Let your own boy or girl make its acquaintance in this fine edition, which, with its many splendid illustrations in black and white and in color, so delightfully catches the spirit of the story.'

 

Featured below are all of Rhead's one-page illustrations for TD, totaling twenty. Three are actually colored (I wish they all were), and for comparison's sake I've snuck in two of Rhead's original pen & ink illustrations. Because of length consideration, I've omitted the chapter heading decorations with the exception of the first one and the last one.

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BLACKIE & Son of London published a hardback edition of TD in 1910, then reprinted it every decade or so, eventually adding a dustjacket (the 1930 edition seen above). Alfred Pearse produced the jacket and the matching frontispiece art along with three additional interior illustrations.



Alfred Pearse (1855-1933) was a prize-winning English book-illustrator, critic, engraver, author, campaigner and inventor, who studied at the West London School of Art. Among his inventions were improvements to vehicles and cycle wheels, and flying machines. Along with Laurence Houseman, he set up the Suffrage Atelier in 1909, an artists’ collective campaigning for women’s suffrage in England. He also designed posters for the movement, and drew a weekly cartoon in support of Votes for Women. As an honorary captain in WWI he produced artworks, cartoons and propaganda related to the British effort.


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SINCE its first publication in 1841, TD has been republished in hardback in excess of a dozen times by various publishers. But paperback republications are much fewer, totaling less than half of that. And finding good examples has proved to be difficult too, even from powerhouse publishers like Colliers, Penguin and Bantam, so what I've featured below is unfortunately less than complete. I'll keep scouring my local bookstores though, and if I find clean copies I'll post them below for posterity.

The cover art on these two paperbacks, published less than a year apart, in 1962 and 1963, were produced by two different artists, but interestingly enough their styles sort of correspond. The Washington Square Press edition at the top was produced by Robert J. Lee, and the Signet below (12th printing, 1979) was produced by Albert Pucci.

Robert J. Lee (1921-1994), after studying at the Academy of Art in San Francisco, became a very successful children's and adult book cover artist and illustrator. He worked for a wide range of publishers, including Follett, Golden Press, Holt Rinehart & Winston, Little Brown & Co., William Morrow, Platt & Munk, Simon & Schuster, and Whitman, among others. He taught at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for two years (1955-57), and in 1962 he became an associate professor at Marymount College in Tarrytown, NY.  He also produced numerous record album covers for RCA-Victor and others.

Albert John Pucci (1920-2005) studied at the Brooklyn Academy of Fine Arts and the Pratt Institute, later becoming an instructor there for 24 years. One of his students was Frank Frazetta, with whom he developed a lasting friendship. Known primarily as a painter and illustrator, Pucci's output contains works of realism, illustration, book cover art, textile design and romantic cubism. Among his many publishing clients were Dell, Houghton Mifflin, Mentor, Signet, and like his colleague Robert J. Lee, the Washington Square Press. He also produced children's book illustrations and popular greeting cards.

 
'THE DEERSLAYER is rich and absorbing entertainment. But it achieves lasting significance on another level---as a wistful evocation of the spirit of a primitively beautiful America that was as yet unfettered and unspoiled by the "wonders" of civilization.'  ---- Washington Square Press edition.

"It is a rich and intensely exciting... story of an America now so far lost in time and change that it is hard to believe it ever existed. But it did exist, and some memory of it, in our all too artificial day, ought to be cherished by the nation."  ---Allan Nevins (Signet edition).

 

George Gross is generally celebrated for his many 'men's adventure magazine' (MAM) covers and illustrations, which are plentiful to the point of being astonishing. Evidence of this can be found in a recently published book from New Texture, titled George Gross Covered. It's an oversized art book edited by Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, which assembles a huge portion of his MAM cover art, culled from The Men's Adventure Library and MensPulpMags.com. But Gross was also a master at producing paperback cover art, while working for nearly every paperback house in existence, including Airmont, a subsidiary of Avalon Books, which published this edition of TD in 1964.

'The plot of THE DEERSLAYER is characterized by exciting and suspenseful incidents that stir the reader's anticipation, apprehension, and sympathy. Tom Hutter and Hurry Harry's imprudent search for scalps necessitates their rescue from the hostile Hurons, a rescue that constitutes nearly the first half of the plot. Chingachgook and Deerslayer's subsequent attempts to rescue Wah-ta!-Wah, Chingachgooks betrothed, bring them into the camp of their enemies, and result in the capture of Deerslayer. This reversal leads to one of the most memorable scenes in the book. Bound against a young tree, Deerslayer endures the tortures of the tomahawk throw and the shooting contest. Later, the fire is lighted, and Deerslayer's death seems inevitable. Hetty Hutter's heroic action, followed by Chingachgook's timely arrival in advance of the garrison soldiers, initiates the sensational climatic struggle that permits escape."

In 1968 George Gross revisited TD in paperback, this time for Magnum, an imprint of Lancer. Chingachgook may have been removed, but the spirit of the frontier was still very much alive in this new handsome version of the Deerslayer.

'The year is 1740. An ark-like scow hides in a secluded outlet of upper New York's Lake Glimmergals. In it renegade trapper Tom Hutter and his two daughters await, at any moment, an Iroquois attack. When from the shore paddles their would-be-rescuer Natty Bumppo, the young woodsman called Deerslayer, the scene is set for a great adventure in American literature...'

 

 

"NATTY BUMPPO was destined to remain the symbol of a moment of civilization, the dawn of the new American soul..."   ---- Van Wyck Brooks (literary critic, biographer, and historian).

 
[© January, 2024, Jeffersen]