Denver Gillen, Landscape Painter

Denver Gillen is another mid-century illustrator whose work I have always admired. Gillen often incorporated compelling, atmospheric and distinctively stylized landscapes in his illustrations.







Gillen was a favourite of sport fishing and hunting magazine editors, creating many interior illustrations and covers.



Because Gillen himself had no interest in hunting, he consciously focused on the grace and nobility of the animals in his illustrations...



... and of course, looking beyond the subject matter, we see once again Gillen's beautifully realized landscapes.



Other artists might find tricks or shortcuts to represent the background landscape in their work as a symbolic prop. But even when creating textbook illustrations like the one below (which Gillen's daughter told me he found tedious to do) he cut no corners.



Later in his life, after moving to Mexico to semi-retire, Gillen created remarkable gallery paintings celebrating the people and landscapes of his adopted home.

Denver and the Digest

Denver Gillen had a long relationship with the Reader's Digest, according to Walt Reed's Illustrator in America.

By design or due to printing limitations, Reader's Digest had a distinctive "gentle" colour palette that afforded its artists the opportunity to create some very appealing art by way of having to work within those parameters.

Denver Gillen did work for many other publications, including the Saturday Evening Post, in a more fully painted style, but even there you can see he was primarily a "linear" illustrator so its easy to see why his very accomplished style would make him a favourite with the Digest's editors.

You'll find several more pieces by this artist in my Denver Gillen Flickr set.