Coles Phillips

A few years ago I saw a book at the store, drawn to the cover art.  I didn’t remember what the book was called or who it was by, but I remembered that cover.  Early 2014, I found the book again because I remembered the cover.  The book is Fadeaway Girl by Martha Grimes.  I bought the book and read it (it was fine; turns out it was the latest in a series I hadn’t read), and the book talked briefly about the Fadeaway Girls of artist Coles Phillips.  I’ve been a little obsessed with his art ever since.  Not just the Fadeaway Girls, but his advertisements and magazine covers too.  As of this writing, two of my social media profiles are his work.

Clarence Coles Phillips was born in October 1880 in Springfield, Ohio.  From the age of eight, and throughout his life, he raised pigeons.  He was always interested in art, too, but that wasn’t really a viable career in late-1800s Ohio.  After Coles graduated high school, his father got him a job at the American Radiator Company in Springfield.  Coles didn’t really care for this though and, after securing a letter of recommendation (you can never be too safe), he enrolled at Kenyon College in 1902.  While at Kenyon he joined the Alpha Delta Phi literary society, as well as doing illustrations.  The 1901-1904 editions of the Kenyon College yearbook, The Reveille, published some of his illustrations.  Coles decided that, like American Radiator, Kenyon wasn’t really right for him, and moved to Manhattan after his junior year.

In New York, Coles pulled out that letter of recommendation from his boss at American Radiator in Ohio, and got a job at their New York office, rising up to be a salesman.  While at American Radiator, though, Coles was caught with a caricature of his boss and was fired.  By chance, a friend of Coles’ told J. A. Mitchell, publisher of Life, what happened.  Mitchell offered Coles a job at the humor magazine (not the photo-journalism magazine that would come later).  Coles decided to go to art school first though.

For three months Coles took night classes at Chase School of Art.  Those three months were the only formal art training he ever had.  Coles decided school wasn’t right for him again.  He worked for a time at a studio that did assembly-line art; Coles was responsible for feet and ankles (which would come in handy when he did hosiery ads later on).  After this he moved briefly to an advertising agency, but decided to open his own instead.  In 1906, C. C. Phillips & Co. Agency opened with only two employees, one of whom was Edward Hopper, one of Coles’ former classmates.

In 1907, Coles met with J. A. Mitchell and was hired on at Life.  Coles first nationally published illustration was a black and white centerfold of a young lady across the table from an old lady, captioned with a line from The Rubiyat.  This first illustration came out April 11, 1907, and more black and white centerfolds followed.  Coles’ art was very popular with Life’s readers.

That same year, Coles met Teresa Hyde, a nurse.  She became his most frequent model in his early years, and in early 1910 they married.  From 1905, Coles had been living in New Rochelle, New York.  New Rochelle was popular with illustrators at this time and for years afterwards.  Illustrators J. C. Leyendecker and Norman Rockwell also lived in New Rochelle.

Shortly after he began at Life, the magazine switched over to color covers and asked Coles to do the art.  They wanted something new and distinct to set their magazine apart.  Coles gave them his fadeaway idea.

The story goes that Coles got the idea for the fadeaway technique when he was visiting a friend.  The friend was dressed in a tux, playing a violin, in a very dimly lit room.  Coles couldn’t see all of his friend, but rather the friend was suggested by “the highlights on the violin, the shine on his shoes, and the small bits of white shirt that were visible” (1).

Coles had tried his new technique in black and white, but wanted to try it in color.  Doing the fadeaway technique for the magazine cover required studying the proportions of the canvas and the final dimensions for the cover, to make sure the effect would not get lost between painting and printing.  Coles’ first cover for Life was February 20, 1908.  This played with the ideas he was forming, but wasn’t a true fadeaway image.  He continued to tweak his work, and on May 28, 1908, the first Fadeaway Girl cover was published.  Like his friend in the tux in the dark, the Fadeaway Girl was “a figure whose clothing matched, and disappeared into, the background” (2).

Over the next four years, Coles did over fifty-four covers for Life, moving on to a contract with Good Housekeeping for covers for them for five years, becoming their sole cover artist beginning for two years beginning in July 1912.  Other magazines he did covers for included Colliers, Ladies’ Home Journal, McCall’s, Saturday Evening Post, Women’s Home Journal, and Liberty.  In the middle of this time, in 1911, Coles Phillips went from C. Coles Phillips to just Coles Phillips.  Coles was one of the first illustrators to “insist that his name appear with all his images, including advertising work, and he usually painted a signature in print letters into each work” (3).

Part of why the fadeaway technique was so popular, on the publisher’s end, was that, while it was new and striking and popular with audiences left to fill-in the rest of the image themselves, the magazines were “getting by with single color or two-color covers in a day when full-color covers were de rigeur for the better magazines” (4).

In addition to producing art for magazines, Coles was also designing book covers.  These covers started quickly after his Life covers.  His cover for The Gorgeous Isle by Gertrude Atherton came out in October 1908.  Other books Coles did covers or illustrations for included The Siege of the Seven Suitors by Meredith Nicholson, Michael Thwaites’ Wife by Miriam Michelson, and The Fascinating Mrs. Halton by E. F. Benson.

By 1911, Coles Phillips’ art was so popular that a collection of his art from Life and Good Housekeeping was published in the collection A Gallery of Girls.  This was followed with another in 1912 called A Young Man’s Fancy.

At the turn of the century, the Gibson Girl was the popular girl for illustrations and advertisements.  She was prim and proper, with big hair and sleepy eyes.  The girl of the teens and twenties was modern and athletic.  She showed more skin “but she still had a wholesome look to her” (5).  Coles Phillips helped popularize this image.

In addition to his art in books and magazines, Coles Phillips did advertisements too, a rare artist at the time who didn’t see a problem with doing commercial art as well.  These advertisements are really what helped popularize the new girl of the teens and twenties.  A lot of his ads were for women’s clothing, including hosiery.  He also did ads for automobiles and flatware.  A lot of the companies he did work for necessitated a more modern and athletic girl than the Gibson Girl had been.  You can’t advertise hosiery without showing a girl’s legs.  Automobiles were seen as fast and daring, and so the girls became so too.  In 1924 he “caused a sensation with his ‘Miss Sunburn’, a bathing beauty created for Unguetine sun tanning lotion” (6).

In 1920 Coles Phillips entered the Clark Equipment Company’s “The Spirit of Transportation” competition.  While he lost to Maxfield Parrish, James Cady Ewell, and Jonas Lie, his entry took everyone by surprise.  While a number of the entries had classical themes, Coles’ had a winged, naked woman carrying a torch in front of an automobile.  Like the 1924 Miss Sunburn ad, this was more than audiences were used to seeing in such a modern style.  Despite the shock some of his work elicited, Coles’ popularity didn’t diminish.  In 1921 and 1922 the U. S. Naval Academy included his work in its yearbook, Lucky Bag.  He continued to produced advertisements as well.

In 1924, Coles was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the kidney.  He’d been sick on and off and would continue to be so until his death.  In January of 1927, problems with his eyesight made painting increasingly difficult and so he turned to writing.  He didn’t live much longer though.  On June 13, 1927, neighbor and friend, J. C. Leyendecker took Coles and Teresa’s four children to Manhattan for the Lindbergh ticker tape parade.  While they were out, Coles died at home from his kidney problems.  He was just 47.

Coles Phillips’ art during his lifetime and afterwards was featured on “magazine covers, illustrations and ads, postcards, posters, poster stamps, prints, book illustrations, calendars, hosiery and silverware boxes, fans, blotters, streetcar signs, and booklets” (7).  In 1993 he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame (8).

I’m just going to leave you with a bunch of his art (in addition to those scattered throughout this post).  I just love his techniques and the overall feel his art has.  I hope you all enjoy it as well.

        

1, 3, 7 – Norm Platnick, “Coles Phillips and the Fade-Away Lady,” American Art Archives.

2, 4 – Coles Phillips

5, 8 – Coles Phillips

6 – Coles Phillips: American Imagist

Elihu Palmer

When I have no idea what to write about, or am coming up with too many ideas and can’t narrow them down, I ask other people what or who they would want me to look up and write about.  That’s how I did the Eastern State Penitentiary piece (hi mom!) and that’s how we have today’s post, courtesy of my husband.  Today’s is tricky (I think that’s part of why he picked it).  I fully admit that I usually start by Googling the topic or looking at Wikipedia.  I always try and find that information elsewhere, but Wikipedia is actually a pretty good place to start for basic information; some of their articles are even starred or locked, showing their accuracy.  Today’s topic, Elihu Palmer, had a stub on Wikipedia.  Oooookay…  Everywhere I looked had similar information, but with some extra tidbits here and there, so we’re going to see how well I pulled something together from little information.

Elihu Palmer was born in 1764 in Canterbury, Connecticut.  That’s about all we known about him until he was in his twenties.  Already having issues learning about him…  When he was growing up, though, we know what was going on in the country.  We weren’t the United States yet, but we were getting there.  The country would be founded without explicit religion, and with the idea that all religions could be practiced free of persecution.  Many of the Founding Fathers were deists, believing that the natural world and reason and observation were all one needed to determine if there was a god or not.

Unitarianism was also gaining in popularity at this time.  Unitarianism is a branch of Protestantism that believes in one god, not the Trinity like Catholics believe in.  They also believe that Jesus is not God himself, but human, though could possibly still be considered a savior.  In 1782 the first recognized Unitarian church opened in the United States in Boston, Massachusetts.  Unitarians were a very liberal branch of Christianity and the Enlightenment helped their beliefs gain popularity.  All of this is to say that even among ministers, some very radical ideas were emerging, and some of them broke with religion altogether.

Elihu Palmer studied to be a Presbyterian minister at Dartmouth, and graduated in 1787, taking a position in what is now Queens in New York.  Within a year, though, Palmer was dismissed from his position.  In 1789, he moved to Philadelphia and joined a Baptist Church.  Ultimately, though, the Baptists too kicked him out.  In both of these cases, it seems that Palmer had begun speaking in more deist terms, and against the divinity of Jesus.  Palmer then “became somewhat of a physical, spiritual, and intellectual wanderer” (1).

Palmer wound up in New York City where he became a Universalist, but also publicly rejected Jesus’s divinity, which wasn’t part of Universalist beliefs.  Palmer and his wife worked for deism and his ideas began to gain traction.  He even planned speeches challenging Jesus’s divinity, and published ads for them in the local papers (2).  With all of his outspokenness though, Palmer and his followers were banned from Philadelphia.

Palmer decided to become a lawyer, and passed the Pennsylvania bar in 1793.  Despite having been banned, he returned to Philadelphia.  This was a fateful decision.  In 1793, a yellow fever epidemic broke out in Philadelphia.  Over five thousand people died, Palmer’s wife being one of those who died.  Palmer survived, but was blinded.  “His enemies naturally saw his blindness as God’s punishment for heresy” (3), even though there were many religious people who died in the epidemic as well.

After his blinding, Palmer couldn’t practice law anymore, and so became a travelling lecturer for deism.  His first stop was in Augusta, Georgia and he was received favorably, or at least cordially.  Georgia had based their separation of church and state rules on Virginia’s religious freedom act (4).  While in Augusta, Palmer also helped to collect “materials for Dr. Jedidiah Morse’s ‘Geography’” (5); Morse wrote geography textbooks, and his son would create Morse Code.

After lecturing in Georgia, Palmer moved back to Philadelphia, and then on to New York, still lecturing throughout the East Coast.  Palmer’s first speech in New York took place on Christmas Day.  Palmer believed this was a day “well suited to the denunciation of both Christianity and Christ” (6).  In New York in 1796, Palmer formed the Deistical Society of New York.

Palmer was an extreme deist, though, holding positions that many did not.  He believed that “the flawed teachings of Jesus were responsible for Christianity’s sordid history” (7) and that belief in supernatural experiences “undermines nature’s principles and furthers human misery by setting up unreasonable expectations” (8).  He believed in natural philosophy and criticized institutional Christianity.  Palmer was a close friend of Thomas Paine, but his beliefs were much more extreme than Paine’s.  Paine believed there were still ethical things in the New Testament and that there was virtue in the teachings of Jesus (9).  The two wrote similarly though, being incredibly honest about their beliefs and pulling no punches.   Palmer, though, didn’t care about what others believed if they were against his beliefs.

Despite his abrasiveness, Palmer was popular and was important for secularism in the young country.  Deism was largely seen as only for educated and/or upper-class people.  Palmer brought deism down to a level that was accessible for everyone.  The Deistical Society he formed in New York, as well as in Philadelphia and Baltimore, had members that were shopkeepers and artisans.  “With the exception of doctors, almost no members of learned professions were recorded as members” (J).  Palmer founded two newspapers in 1800 and 1803; the only reason the papers had to stop publication was because the subscribers couldn’t pay their bills on time, not because there was a lack of subscribers.

In addition to his speeches, Palmer wrote.  He wrote the speeches he gave, he wrote pieces for his and others’ newspapers, and he wrote a book, Principles of Nature, published first in 1801.  In Principles of Nature, Palmer reiterated his belief that “‘the world in infinitely worse’ for following Jesus” (10).  Palmer believed it was the “nonreligious advances in human thought” (11) which led to the creation of the printing press and eventually to the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions.  He believed the Enlightenment had allowed for the enfranchisement of men “who had never before been considered fit to govern themselves” (12).

Principles of Nature had sold out three editions by the time of Palmer’s death in 1806 at 42 while on a speaking tour.  Upon his death, his widow (he remarried shortly after the death of his first wife) was left without property or money and only made due with the help of Thomas Paine.  Principles of Nature was still being published after Palmer’s death.  In 1819, the London publisher Richard Carlile published it with help from his wife while he was in prison for having published other scandalous or heretical books.  In 1824, two booksellers went to prison for three years each for selling Principles of Nature and The Age of Reason.

That’s Elihu Palmer.  Still not a whole lot of information about him, but I’ve tried to do the best I could.  Even though we don’t know a lot about him personally, and his seeming abrasiveness led to some unpopularity, I think he’s important to know and know about.  Like mentioned earlier, he helped bring deism and Enlightenment ideas to those who maybe hadn’t heard of it.  He laid foundations for freethinking and secularism in the United States, even if we don’t know his name.  I’m glad my husband suggested him.

1, 5 – Elihu Palmer

2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12 – Susan Jacoby, Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (New York: Henry Holtand Company, 2004).

7, 10 – Elihu Palmer

8 – Palmer, Elihu

Black Cats

I’m a bit behind on this one, as Hallowe’en was Saturday, but today’s still closer to Hallowe’en than last Monday was so… Let’s call it good.  As someone who has two mostly black cats, I find it interesting that they’re often considered bad luck.  Our black (and white) kitties are the sweetest cats (if a little butthole-y sometimes, haha).  So many people are predisposed against black cats though because they have such a negative history and negative connotations.  If anything, now, I’m biased towards them.

There are twenty-two recognized breeds of cat that can have solid black cats.  The only breed of cat that is always all black is the Bombay; created in the 1950s by mixing the black American shorthair and the sable Burmese, they were created to look like a mini panther.  Slightly more male than female cats can be all black.  Because of the high melanin in black cats, they generally have that golden yellow eye color.  A lot of black cats are really just suppressed tabby cats; you can see the tabby in certain lights.  Black cats with a white root are called “black smoke”, while black cats that look brown in the sun are said to “rust” in the sunlight.

To combat the negative history of black cats (which we’ll get to shortly), August 17 is “Black Cat Appreciation Day” and October 27 in Great Britain is “Black Cat Day”.  These days are trying to get more people to not be afraid of black cats and to love them.  In the United States in shelters, black cats have a lower adoption rate than other colors of cats.  Social media pushes towards making black cats favorable are helping.  Oddly, social media is also causing people to shy away from adopting black cats because they don’t photograph as well and therefore probably won’t become the next internet superstar cat.

Now to get to the history of black cats (and a little on cats generally).  In Egypt, cats were revered.  They could catch and kill cobras and other pests.  A lot of cats were even honored with mummification.  In Ancient Egypt there was even a cat goddess, Bast or Bastet.  Bastet was a woman with the head of a cat (originally the head of a lion.  Cats as pets were becoming popular and so her image changed around 1000 BCE).  Egyptians believed they could gain Bastet’s favor by having black cats in their home.  Cats were so revered that killing a cat was a capital offense.

The Norse liked cats as well.  One of the names that the goddess Freya was known as was Mistress of the Cats.  Her chariot was pulled by multiple pairs of large cats the color of night.  With the spread of Christianity, though, other religions became bad and the things they believed were turned on their head.  This is probably part of why cats became bad: the Egyptians and Norse liked them and Christianity couldn’t have that.

We’ll get to black cats’ association with witches shortly, but first, in some places black cats are considered good luck.  In a lot of Britain black cats are good, and in Japan as well.  One belief in England was that “a lady who owns a black cat will have many suitors” (1).  In most of the UK, a black cat crossing your path is good.  In Germany, if the cat crosses from right to left it is considered bad luck, but if they cross from left to right it’s good luck.  In the English Midlands, a black cat is considered good luck to give to a bride on her wedding day.

In some of England, and much of Europe, black cats are unlucky.  Essex was the first place in England to get cats, and they also had a lot of witchcraft.  In England and Ireland, there is the story of the Cat Sith, a large black cat, possibly with a white spot on its chest.  The Cat Sith is either a fairy disguised as a cat, or a witch in the form of a cat.  The Cat Sith could “steal a dead person’s sould before [the] gods could claim it”.

By 1348, black cats were associated with the devil and were nearly exterminated.  This was the time of the Black Death, believed to be caused by God’s wrath.  People would try to “placate him by burning women accused of witchcraft” (2); black cats were guilty by association.  With the killing of so many cats, it actually caused the rat population to explode, making the plague worse.  In Kidwelly in southwest Wales, though, when people came to the town after the plague, the only living creature around was a black cat and so it became the town’s mascot.

Cats were associated with witches because “alley cats were often cared for and fed by the poor lonely old ladies … later accused of witchery” (3).  Cats were then seen as these witches’ companions, which morphed into being their familiars.  In 1560s Lincolnshire, another story goes, a father and son were out walking at night when a black cat crossed their path, and so they threw rocks at it causing the cat to run into a house.  Unfortunately the house it ran into was that of a suspected witch.  When the woman was seen the next day she had bruises like the cat would have had, and was limping.  This helped lead to the belief that witches could turn into black cats at night.  It was even said that you shouldn’t discuss anything family related or personal in front of a black cat in case it was a witch in disguise.

These beliefs helped feed into the Pilgrims paranoias related to the devil.  They were afraid of anything devil related.  Witches were brides of the devil or had signed a pact with him.  Anything related to the witch was therefore bad as well.  Black cats got caught up in this.  In some cases anyone caught with a black cat could “be severely punished or even killed” (4).  It didn’t help that the color black itself had negative connotations: black mass, black magic, etc.

Witches also were associated with black cats because of the cats’ natural ability to blend in at night as well as cats’ highly nocturnal nature.  The way cats almost always land on their feet when they fall, and the reflective tapetum lucidum in their eyes, added to the strange behavior cats were known for.  If we add to all this that the Pilgrims were in a new and unfamiliar place and were suspicious of the unusual anyway, this added up to a lot of cries of witchcraft and lots of negative associations for black cats.

King Charles I of England didn’t believe all this nonsense though.  He was on the other side of the matter and believed black cats to be lucky.  He owned a black cat and just loved it and believed it brought him good luck.  When his cat died, Charles believed his luck was gone as well.  Supposedly the next day Charles was arrested and charged with high treason; his luck had definitely run out.

Other people also didn’t think of black cats as bad.  Sailors in search of a ship cat wanted a black cat because it would bring them good luck.  Fisherman’s wives also wanted black cats because of this association with the sea, hoping the cat “would be able to use their influence to protect their husbands at sea” (5).  If a black cat walked onto a ship and then walked off again, though, the ship would sink on its next trip.  In the 18^th century, pirates believed that a black cat walking towards you was bad luck, but walking away from you was good luck.  Many in the UK believed the opposite: that a cat was bringing you good luck and if it was walking away from you it was taking the luck away with it.

In Yorkshire it was believed that black cats were lucky to own, but unlucky if they just crossed your path.  In Scotland a strange black cat appearing on your porch brought you prosperity.  In Japan, “black manekineko (beckoning cats) are a wish for good health” (6).

In the 1880s, black became associated with anarchists and so a black cat in a fighting stance became an anarchist symbol.  In the early 20^th century, the International Workers of the World (IWW), or the Wobblies, used a black cat as their symbol, playing off its negative history.  If an employer the Wobblies had an issue with saw the black cat symbol, they knew it was bad luck for them.

In England, early 20^th century football cartoons used black cats.  When one young supporter kept a black kitten in his pocket throughout the 1937 finals, and Sunderland won, Sunderland adopted the cat as their nickname/mascot.  In the early days of television, many channel thirteens used black cats as their mascots, as well, to play off the unlucky nature of their channel number.

There are positive cats, and specifically black cats, in popular culture though.  There are Dick Whittington and Puss in Boots.  There’s Felix the Cat, and Booboo Kitty from Laverne and Shirley.  There was a black cat named Isis on an original episode of Star Trek.  There are black cats in Edgar Allan Poe stories, Neil Gaiman stories; there’s a black cat character in a Marvel comic; there’s a Janet Jackson song.  There are still negative connotations related to black cats, but I think the positives are slowly gaining on them.  I, for one, love my black kitties and hate to think that people have silly superstitions about them.

1, 4, 5 – Black Cat

2 – Simon Edge, “Beware the black cat,” Express, July 31, 2014.

3 – Why Black Cats Are Considered Bad Luck

6 – Samantha M., “A History of Black Cats – the good. the bad. the thoughtfully creative.”, Black Cat Rescue, November 3, 2011.