Thursday, May 12, 2011

Still More Rowland B. Wilson

Wilson12

Wilson09

Wilson05

Wilson08

Thanks again to Mike Vosburg for all these terrific Rowland B. Wilson scans we've been enjoying this week!

6 comments:

  1. What a decisive line. Great design and draftsmanship. RW has always been a source of delight. Thanks, Leif, and Mike, for these.

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  2. Anonymous3:16 PM

    Gorgeous compositions...thank you for posting, very breathtaking line work!

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  3. Anonymous7:37 PM

    GASP! I have seen that bear advertisement before in an old National Geographic magazine. There's another great one Wilson did for New England Life that involves a fisherman and a swordfish. Oh, I am so happy to see more of his work! Thank you!

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  4. Besides the nice Playboy stuff,I used to enjoy seeing his ads for New England Life Insurance,with some unwary, doomed victim of deadly disaster calmly discussing his life insurance choice.

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  5. I always wondered about Wilson's ability to do gags for Playboy that WEREN'T about sex. Did he have some inside track?
    Also his use of fact in fantasy.
    That's a Bristol F 2 B, by the way. Beatifully caricatured.

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  6. * I'm posting this on Bill Peckmann's behalf ~ Leif

    Bill Peckmann replies:

    Hi Leif,

    I wish I was a little more computer literate so I would be able to send in comments to your site. (I just can't get past URL etc. stuff.) I never get thru.

    With that, I did want to answer Scott Caple's two questions. About Rowland having an inside track to Playboy- Not anymore than anybody else did, Rowland did quality work (as always) and in those heady, hey days, Hefner printed quality work. Row kinda veered away from sex gags because the other aspects of life gave him a wider range to see the funny side of the street.

    Yup, that's a WW I Bristol F2B aeroplane! RBW was an avid WW I model airplane builder, man, you should have seen the color schemes he painted on those "kites"!

    On rereading RBW's Cartoonist Profiles interview I came across him saying "After graduating (University of Texas) I went to Graduate School at Columbia University in NYC working on a masters in fine art". To me this is one of the big keys to Row's career. He never did a piece of art that he didn't commit to like he was painting for the Pope and now so much of his craft is timeless and holds up so well.

    Maybe this will be the age of RBW and a book will come out!

    Thanks for your ear,
    -Bill

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