Artists Everyone Should Know: J. C. Leyendecker

I've decided to start making posts about great artists that aren't as popular as I think they should be. Some of these people may be current artists, and some may be artists from the past. Today's artist, J.C. Leyendecker, is an artist from the past. You may remember that I made a CG bust in Mudbox of a man in Leyendecker's style.

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in 1874 in Germany, and died in 1951 is the U.S. His work preceded that of Norman Rockwell (born in 1894, died in 1978). Rockwell was inspired by Leyendecker, and friends with him. He was even a pallbearer at Leyendecker's funeral.

Leyendecker became famous, like Rockwell, for making magazine illustrations, including covers and advertisements. He also made book and poster illustrations. However, he is most famous for his ads featuring the Arrow Collar Man, and for his covers for The Saturday Evening Post. His work was most popular during the 1920s, allowing him to really live it up with a decadent Roaring Twenties lifestyle. However, in the 1930s, the world began to change and his number of commissions declined. The collar industry declined, and so his Arrow Collar Man work ended. And in 1943 he made his last cover for The Saturday Evening Post. By the time of his death, he had ended his luxurious lifestyle of the twenties, let his staff go, and was maintaining his huge New Rochelle estate with just his lifetime companion Charles Beach (the original model for the Arrow Collar Man, and possibly Leyendecker's lover).

Along with influencing Norman Rockwell, Leyendecker is also credited with inspiring the graphics in the computer game The Dagger of Amon Ra and the character designs for Team Fortress 2. His clients included the Kellogg Company, Palmolive Soap, Procter & Gamble, and the U.S. Army, Marines, and Navy.