Visual Themes - Your Favorite Illustrator

[Teach USMC]

Some instructors use the SPA ("single prolific illustrator") technique to establish "visual themes" for their presentations.



The first step in using this technique is the discovery of a collection of images in the same style created by a single artist.  With this in mind, I find myself wondering about the illustrators who have had their works used in this way.

So, if you use the SPA technique - or, are just thinking about it, please tell us about your favorite artists.







 

[Teach USMC]

You know this already, but my own favorite artist is J.C. Leyendecker.  US Marines will recognize some of the classic recruiting posters that he painted.

[On_Infantry]

My own favorite illustrator is John W. Thomason, Jr., USMC.

[Bruce_Gudmundsson]

My vote is for Howard Pyle.

[Corredor]

How about Frederic Remington?

[On_Infantry]

I also like the works of Edouard Détaille.  (The are wonderfully de-tailed!  )

[Paul Westermeyer]

 You should contact the NMMC Senior Art Curator
Joan Thomas. She has all the info on prolific USMC artists. :) https://www.usmcmuseum.com/staff-directory.html


https://www.usmcmuseum.com/combat_art_gallery.html

[John e Vaaler]

  Some of the most compelling propaganda (prop) poster illustrations during the 1960s of the Cold War and Vietnam Conflict were composed by anonymous artists exhibiting a style referred to as "socialist realism"-- or at least the Red Chinese version of it, and there is no Western art work of a similar purpose during this period that even comes close in terms of artistic merit and impact.

[John e Vaaler]

<nabble_img src="ft_snelling_John_Caspar_Wild_1841.<nabble_img src="Treaty_of_traverse_des_Sioux_1851.

Highly recommend American frontier art by George Catlin, Seth Eastman, Frank Blackwell Mayer, and John Casper Wild, all of whom visited Dakota Sioux in and around the Mississippi and Minnesota River Valleys and other Indian tribes in the early-mid 19th Century.  Many of Catlin's works can be found at the National Portrait Gallery in Wash DC.  Here are a few examples of their eye-witness, by-in-large, realistic and accurate works of art. The above portrait of a Dakota Sioux Chief is Little Crow painted by Frank Mayer in 1851 at the signing of the Treaty of Traverse Des Sioux.  Eleven years later, Little Crow would lead the failed Sioux Uprising of 1862 in the Minnesota Territory , which marked the beginning of the series of campaigns, wars and battles against Eastern (Dakota) and Western (Lakota) Sioux tribes ending in the battle of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, December 1890.

[Bruce_Gudmundsson]

I recently ran across this collection of pictures, which were made by Irish artist Daniel Maclise for a book about the Norman conquest of England.  

While I am using these pictures to improve my "historical immersion problems" ("decision-forcing cases") dealing with events from this period, I was also struck by the possibility that other books of this type might be useful to military instructors.

[Teach USMC]

Here's an artist that I've just discovered ....

Charles Frederick William Mielatz

[Bruce_Gudmundsson]

I've already voted ... but ... I'd like to draw attention to Vasily Vareschagin, a Russian artist whose paintings provide an excellent means of communicating some of the key themes of both maneuver warfare and Fourth Generation Warfare.