Art Seiden - Master of the Storybook Style

Several illustrators can lay claim to having pioneered the 1950's storybook style, and chief among them would be Art Seiden.


Seiden, who illustrated many children's books during his career, produced the art for Wonder Books' edition of Pinocchio in 1954...



But Seiden was far more than just a storybook illustrator. He did this piece for American magazine in 1951, he had worked for a variety of advertising and editorial clients, including Phillip Morris, Hoffmann-LaRoche, General Motors and Hearst Publications... and his talents were being advertised to a broad base of commercial clients by his rep, Dick Chenault Art Services, in at least one 1953 issue of Art Director & Studio News.


This small space ad doesn't seem to say much at first glance, but actually it provides some interesting clues to Seiden's career and to the illustration business of the time in general:

For instance, in the ad Chenault also lists the other artists he represents. They include Charles Hawes, Victor Kalin and Stan Klimley - all successful illustrators with 'realistic' styles. In fact Klimley had been associated with the powerhouse Charles E. Cooper studio just a few years earlier.


Chenault's decision to highlight Art Seiden among his stable of illustrators suggests that, while the realistic illustration styles still dominated the commercial art field at the time, storybook styles were garnering consideration among ad clients as a forward-thinking alternative.


Note also that the ad describes Seiden as a 'decorative' illustrator...


'Decorative' was a broadly used term for a range of styles that didn't fit the general category of realism. Even cartoonist Roy Doty, in his listing in the 1947 Art Director's Annual describes his work as "humorous decorative illustration".

Certainly Seiden is one of the artists who set the tone for what would become the 'look' of decorative illustration later in the 50's and into the 60's (one need only look at the many props in this batch of illustrations to see the template a generation of decorative artists used in their own work -- a template still being used by a generation of illustrators today).


But Art Seiden's deceptively simple-looking style is actually far more than merely 'decorative'. It may well have been the perfect variation of the popular approach used by many realistic artists during the 50's: that flat, graphic gouache technique incorporating bold, symplified, colourful shapes and patterning.

When the camera began replacing that 'big head', Cooper studio type of realistic illustration, the style Seiden (and others) had fostered provided a stepping stone - a transition point - for the next phase in illustration.

My Art Seiden Flickr set.