Illustration: Lawson Wood Monkey Mania

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.


Here are more great monkey paintings by Lawson Wood. If you missed our previous posts on this great illustrator, see the links at the bottom of this post.











Thanks to Mike Fontanelli and Will Finn for contributing these great vintage illustrations.

If you enjoyed this post, see... Lawson Wood: The Monkey Painter, More Fabulous Monkey Paintings, Wartime Era Colliers, Mid 30s Colliers Illustrations, Mid 30s Advertisements, Late 40s Colliers, Casey Strikes Out In Coronet, Bugs Bunny in Coronet Magazine December 1945, Milton Caniff in Coronet Magazine, Dispatch From Disney's Part One and Part Two, John Held Jr, Ward Kimball in Escapade, Complete Guide To Cartooning On Magazine Cartoons Part One and Part Two, and Rube Goldberg's Side Show.

Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
.

Stumble It!

Illustration: More From The Monkey Man, Lawson Wood

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.



Awhile back, we featured an article on the "Monkey Painter", Lawson Wood. Mike Fontanelli recently brought by a big stack of vintage Colliers magazines with Wood covers for us to scan. Check these babies out!








The other day, I was surfing blogs and I came across a post that popped my eyes on Will Finn's blog, Small Room. It featured scans of a fabulous Wartime era calendar by Wood from Will's collection. I dropped him a note and he generously brought it by for us to scan for the Archive. Here are a few samples...







There are more images from this great calendar in Will's article on Lawson Wood. If you haven't bookmarked Will's page yet, you should. Where else are you going to find inspiration and insight like the stuff on Will Finn's Small Room?

Many thanks to Will Finn and Mike Fontanelli for their generous support of the Archive project.

If you found this post useful, see our first post on... Lawson Wood, The Monkey Painter and our posts on 1940s Colliers Illustration and Colliers From The 30s.

Also see... The Genius Of Miguel Covarrubias, Wartime Propaganda Posters Part One and Part Two, Will Finn's Letter From Ward Kimball, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Arthur Szyk's The New Order / Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

I carefully choose the "Also See" links at the bottom of each post to tip you off to great related stuff that you might have missed. Click on them! For more info, see Bud Plant's terrific Lawson Wood Bio.

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

Stumble It!

Illustration: Lawson Wood- The Monkey Painter

This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for more jaw dropping images from classic illustrated books and magazines.


Lawson Wood is one of the most unusual artists of the golden age of magazine illustration, largely because of the subject he chose to illustrate- monkeys... well, to be scientifically accurate, most of them are apes, but to a cartoonist, a monkey is a monkey.

Wood was born in London in 1878 to a family already well outfitted with artists. He developed his skills swiftly, and by age 18 he was a published illustrator. By the early years of the 20th century, he was established as an artist adept at both "straight" subjects and humorous fantasy. His images of cave men and dinosaurs were particularly popular in England, but the paintings that brought him fame in America were his monkeys...


This album was brought to us to digitize by archive supporter, Mike Fontanelli, and it gives you a good idea of how much Wood got out of his silly subject matter. Wood's Gran'pop Monkey and friends graced the cover of many issues of Colliers, and there was even talk of adapting the characters to star in a series of animated cartoons. Ub Iwerks was slated to produce the series, but the outbreak of war and the closing of Iwerks' studio nipped the idea in the bud. However, Wood understood the value of merchandising early on; he even headed up his own toy manufacturing firm, and he died a very wealthy man in 1957.

Some people can't get past the "kitsch factor" of Wood's illustrations. But even those who hate his work have to grudgingly admit that he had wonderful painting technique. Love him or hate him, here is Lawson Wood...













Mike Fontanelli recently brought by a big stack of vintage Colliers magazines with Wood covers for us to scan as well. Check these babies out!







The other day, I was surfing blogs and I came across a post that popped my eyes on Will Finn's blog, Small Room. It featured scans of a fabulous Wartime era calendar by Wood from Will's collection. I dropped him a note and he generously brought it by for us to scan for the Archive. Here are a few samples...






There are more images from this great calendar in Will's article on Lawson Wood. If you haven't bookmarked Will's page yet, you should. Where else are you going to find inspiration and insight like the stuff on Will Finn's Small Room?

For more info, see Bud Plant's terrific Lawson Wood Bio. Many thanks to Will Finn and Mike Fontanelli for their generous support of the Archive project.

If you found this post useful, see our posts on... 1940s Colliers Illustration and Colliers From The 30s.

Also see... The Genius Of Miguel Covarrubias, Wartime Propaganda Posters Part One and Part Two, Will Finn's Letter From Ward Kimball, John Bauer's Bland Tomtar Och Troll / Frank Reynolds Paints Pickwick / Arthur Szyk's The New Order / Artzybasheff's Neurotica, Machinalia and Diablerie

Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive

3.3.09
.

Stumble It!