Partner Charles Beach
Queer Places:
Académie Julian, Passage des Panoramas, Paris, Francia
Studebaker Building/Fine Arts Building, 410-418 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605
Bryant Park Studios, 80 W 40th St, New York, NY 10018
Mount Tom, 48 Mt Tom Rd, New Rochelle, NY 10805, Stati Uniti
Woodlawn Cemetery, E 233rd St & Webster Avenue, Bronx, NY 10470, Stati Uniti
Joseph
Christian Leyendecker (March 23, 1874 – July 25, 1951) was one of the
preeminent American illustrators of the early 20th century. He is best known
for his poster, book and advertising illustrations, the trade character known
as
The Arrow Collar Man, and his numerous covers for
The Saturday Evening Post.[2][3]
Between 1896 and 1950, Leyendecker painted more than 400 magazine covers.
During the Golden Age of American Illustration, for The Saturday Evening
Post alone, J. C. Leyendecker produced 322 covers, as well as many
advertisement illustrations for its interior pages. No other artist, until the
arrival of
Norman Rockwell two decades later, was so solidly identified with one
publication.[4]
Leyendecker "virtually invented the whole idea of modern magazine design."[5]
Joseph Christian Leyendecker ('J.C.' or 'Joe') was born on March 23, 1874,
at Montabaur in Southwest Germany, a tiny village near the Rhine, to Peter
Leyendecker (1838–1916) and Elizabeth Oreseifen Leyendecker (1845–1905).
Joseph was the first-born son, and his brother
Francis Xavier was born three years later. A sister, Augusta, the third
and last child, arrived after the family emigrated to America.[6]
In 1882, the Leyendecker family immigrated to
Chicago, Illinois, where Elizabeth's uncle had founded the successful
McAvoy Brewing Company. After working in late adolescence for a Chicago
engraving firm,
J. Manz & Company, and completing his first commercial commission of 60
Bible illustrations for the
Powers Brothers Company, J. C. sought formal artistic training at the
school of the
Chicago Art Institute.[7]
After studying drawing and anatomy under
John H. Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute, J. C. and younger brother
Frank enrolled in the
Académie Julian[8]
in Paris for a year, where they were exposed to the work of
Toulouse-Lautrec,
Jules Chéret, and also
Alphonse Mucha, a leader in the French
Art
Nouveau movement.[9][10]
In 1899, the Leyendecker brothers returned to America and set up residence
in an apartment in
Hyde Park, Illinois. They had a studio in
Chicago's Fine Arts Building at 410 South
Michigan Ave. On May 20 of that year, Joe received his first commission
for a
Saturday Evening Post cover – the beginning of his forty-four-year
association with the most popular magazine in the country. Ultimately he would
produce 322 covers for the magazine, introducing many iconic visual images and
traditions including the New Year's Baby, the pudgy red-garbed rendition of
Santa
Claus, flowers for
Mother's Day, and
firecrackers on the
4th of July.[11]
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Studebaker Building/Fine Arts Building, 410-418 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605
One group of artists occupying the top-floor studios of the Fine Arts Building in Chicago, coveted for their capacious skylights, formed the Little Room, a mixed-gender social club whose founding members included painters, writers and other artists, many of whom were gay, like
J. C. Leyendecker and his brother
Frank Xavier Leyendecker. Fostered by novelists
Hamlin Garland and
Henry Blake Fuller, The Little Room met on Friday afternoons and occasional evenings. Among the members were
George Ade,
H.C. Chatfield-Taylor,
Alice Gerstenberg,
James T. Hatfield,
Franklin Harvey Head,
John T. McCutcheon,
Anna Morgan,
Allen Bartlit Pond,
Henry Kitchell Webster,
Lorado Taft,
Lou Wall Moore,
Jane Addams,
Harriet Monroe and
Edith Wyatt.
In 1900, Joe, Frank, and their sister Mary moved to New York City, then the
center of the US commercial art, advertising and publishing industries. During
the next decade, both brothers began lucrative long-term working relationships
with apparel manufactures including Interwoven Socks,
Hartmarx,
B.
Kuppenheimer & Co., and
Cluett Peabody & Company. The latter resulted in Leyendecker's most
important commission when he was hired to develop a series of images of the
Arrow brand of shirt collars. Leyendecker's
Arrow Collar Man, as well as the images he later created for Kuppenheimer
Suits and Interwoven Socks, came to define the fashionable American male
during the early decades of the twentieth century.[4]
Leyendecker often used his favorite model and partner
Charles Beach
(1881–1954).[12][13][14]
Another important commission for Leyendecker was from Kellogg's, the
breakfast food manufacturer. As part of a major advertising campaign, he
created a series of twenty "Kellogg's Kids" to promote Kellogg's Corn Flakes.[14]
In 1914, the Leyendeckers, accompanied by Charles Beach, moved into a large
home and art studio in
New Rochelle, New York, where J. C. would reside for the remainder of his
life.[15]
During the
first
World War, in addition to his many commissions for magazine covers and
men's fashion advertisements, J. C. also painted
recruitment posters for the United States military and the war effort.
The 1920s were in many ways the apex of Leyendecker's career, with some of
his most recognizable work being completed during this time. Modern
advertising had come into its own, with Leyendecker widely regarded as among
the preeminent American
commercial artists. This popularity extended beyond the commercial, and
into Leyendecker's personal life, where he and Charles Beach hosted large
galas attended by people of consequence from all sectors. The parties they
hosted at their New Rochelle home/studio were important social and celebrity
making events.[16]
As the 1920s marked the apex of J. C. Leyendecker's career, so the 1930s
marked the beginning of its decline. Around 1930–31, Cluett, Peabody, & Co.
ceased using Leyendecker's illustrations in its advertisements, now for shirts
and ties as the collar industry seriously declined after 1921. During this
time, the always shy Leyendecker became more and more reclusive, rarely
speaking with people outside of his sister Mary Augusta and Charles (Frank had
died in 1924 as a result of an addiction-riddled lifestyle). Perhaps in
reaction to his almost all-pervasive widespread popularity in the previous
decade, or as a result of the new economic reality following the
Wall Street Crash of 1929, the number of commissions Leyendecker received
steadily declined. In 1936, the editor at the Saturday Evening Post for
all of Leyendecker's career up to that point,
George Horace Lorimer, retired, and was replaced by Wesley Winans Stout
(1937–1942) and then Ben Hibbs (1942–1962), both of whom rarely commissioned
Leyendecker to illustrate covers.[17]
Leyendecker's last cover for the Saturday Evening Post was of a New
Year Baby for January 2, 1943, thus ending the artist's most lucrative and
celebrated string of commissions. New commissions continued to filter in, but
slowly. Among the most prominent were posters for the
United States Department of War, in which Leyendecker depicted commanding
officers of the armed forces encouraging the purchases of
bonds to
support the nation's efforts in
World War II.
Leyendecker died on July 25, 1951, at his estate in New Rochelle of an
acute
coronary occlusion.[17]
Many biographers have speculated on J. C. Leyendecker's sexuality, often
attributing the apparent homoerotic aesthetic of his work to a homosexual
identity. Without question, Leyendecker excelled at depicting male homosocial
spaces (locker rooms, clubhouses, tailoring shops) and extraordinarily
handsome young men in curious poses or exchanging glances. Moreover,
Leyendecker never married, and he lived with another man, Charles Beach, for
much of his adult life, who is assumed to have been his lover and who was the
original model of the famous Arrow Collar Man.[18]
While Beach often organized the famous gala-like social gatherings that
Leyendecker was known for in the 1920s, he apparently also contributed largely
to Leyendecker's social isolation in his later years. Beach reportedly forbade
outside contact with the artist in the last months of his life.[19]
Due to his fame as an illustrator, Leyendecker was able to indulge in a
very luxurious lifestyle which in many ways embodied the decadence of the
Roaring Twenties. However, when commissions began to wane in the 1930s, he
was forced to curtail spending considerably. By the time of his death,
Leyendecker had let all of the household staff at his New Rochelle estate go,
with he and Beach attempting to maintain the extensive estate themselves.
Leyendecker left a tidy estate equally split between his sister and Beach.
Leyendecker is buried alongside parents and brother Frank at
Woodlawn Cemetery in
The Bronx, New York City.[20]
Charles Alwood Beach died in 1954 and is buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery,
East Orange, New Jersey.[22][12][23]
My published books:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._Leyendecker