Happy Valentine's Day!

From that same February 1952 issue of Esquire...

The Feb. '52 Esquire Girl has been added to my Pinups Flickr set.

Bathing Beauties Selling Smokes

Back when I used to smoke (remember when we all used to smoke?) I always felt weird having a cigarette on the beach. I think it was because shoving the spent butt of my smoke into the sand next to where I was lying made me feel like I had spread my blanket in a giant ashtray. To my way of thinking smoking and beaches don't mix.


Still, advertisers have long understood the power of selling their product in association with imagery of a beautiful woman in as little clothing as possible so its no surprise that Pall Mall revisited the theme of bathing beauties selling smokes on several occassions.


I have heard recently that some of the Cooper Studio's top artists illustrated ads for Pall Mall. The two unsigned ads above might have been done by some of them, in fact. So far I have only ever found the signatures of Stan Klimley and most often, Mal Murley (below), who is in my opinion the preeminent Pall Mall illustrator.


Need a bigger nicotine rush? Reward Yourself with more cigarette ad art in my Smoking! Flickr set.

Baby, Its Cold Outside!

Its a cold white world outside my window. They just announced on the radio that a huge snowstorm is scheduled to dump on us for the next two days. I probably shouldn't complain... winter came late this year - but frankly, I'm already sick of it. I'm done. Finito. Summer can't arrive soon enough.


Perhaps the editors at McCall's felt the same way back in February 1952 and that's why they decided to run this seasonally incongruous story, teasingly illustrated in bright white polka dots by Cooper studio top dog, Jon Whitcomb. Perhaps they felt as I do -- that if we can't have some warm weather right now, let's at least dream about hot sunny days, beaches and pool parties -- and bathing suits. Lots and lots of bathing suits. And in my humble opinion, nothing fills a bathing suit better than a lovely female figure.


I thought, since we looked at one of the Cooper Studio's finest last week, Joe De Mers, the best way to segue into this week's topic would be to show the work of some of his studiomates. As you can see from these examples by Whitcomb, Jones and Bowler, the artists at the Cooper Studio were kind of experts at this sort of thing.


So pull on a sweater, grab a mug of hot cocoa, turn up the thermostat and join me, won't you, for a week of sun, surf and bathing beauties.

ANITA VIRGIL / RESPONSE TO READERS

Anita has asked me to post her response to the many kind remarks she has received or read on the Today's Inspiration blog after last week's series on her late husband, Andy Virgil:

When Leif and I first got in touch, I trolled my memory for these long-ago occurrences and began to relive them in a rush. As Andy’s story gradually unfolded, I realized I could not tell it true without exposing a good deal of the personal bases which underlay the events. And any writer knows, there is a time when you must learn to let the work carry you where it wants to go. It is then you are approaching the pure element.

But I had one reservation: I feared Leif’s readers might be impatient with the private background material which is integrated throughout.

"Just show us his art! Nevermind the talk" rang in my ears. And then I thought again: I always want to know as much as possible about people I admire. I wonder how they ever arrive at the point of their noteworthy achievements. By what circuitous -- or direct -- route do they get there? Where finally does life take them? Usually, you never find out enough of that.

I believe the true grandeur of any human being’s life is displayed in how they pursue their goals. "Against all odds," dedicated to something worthwhile, maintaining one’s integrity and decent behavior all the while -- regardless of what life dishes up. That is the measure of anyone, to me. I have tried to show this part of Andy as much as I have gladly displayed his tremendous talent.

From all the incredibly kind responses Leif and I are getting, so full of admiration for Andy’s work as well as a genuine appreciation for hearing of our life, I am satisfied I did not hold back the details.

I hope to respond to those who contact me at this email address:

andyvirgil@verizon.net

Please write 'Andy Virgil' in the Subject line.

A Sincere and Healthy Philosophy

I'm not entirely sure if this unsigned piece (below) is by Joe De Mers but something tells me it is. If you know for sure, don't hesitate to let me know.

I wonder, how did Joe De Mers feel about his advertising assignments? Here's a passage from the Introduction to the Famous Artists School course in illustration:

"The well-trained artist (and he must be well trained) who enters this field of art, with its special rewards of financial security, steady work, and the satisfaction of seeing his pictures reproduced, often nationally, must take on certain obligations. First, he must develop a sincere and healthy philosophy toward the use of his art. Second, he must realize that the buyer's interest in art for its own sake is secondary to his interest in its use to support his selling or communications effort. Third, he must learn about people - his client's audience and its reactions to art forms and symbols. And finally, accepting these considerations, he must produce good pictures that will not only reflect his own personality as a sincere artist - but will also deliver his client's message in a picture language that his audience will find convincing and easy to understand."

I have a lot of respect for the attitude expressed in that passage. I suspect it was an attitude that came easily to the commercial artists of the 50's - perhaps more so than it does to many illustrators today. From reading about - and speaking with - artists from that time I've come to appreciate their professionalism about their craft. Illustration was a great way to make a living and you got to express your creativity to boot - but the client's needs came first. This sometimes means the mattress or the sheets are the 'hero' of the piece and the beautiful girl becomes the prop.

Still, a true professional like De Mers managed to give the client what they wanted while producing his best possible work and maintaining his artistic integrity. That's admirable.


These pieces can be seen at full size in my Joe De Mers Flickr set.

What A Difference A Decade Makes

Scroll back down to the 1952 De Mers pieces I showed you on Tuesday and compare them to these three from 1962. What a difference a decade makes!


In Part 1 of his Illustration magazine article on the Cooper Studio, author Neil Shapiro quotes Don Crowley about a trend that emerged among the Cooper artists in the late 50's: "...they just weren't happy doing illustrations any more. They all wanted to be fine artists."


Perhaps here we are seeing De Mers' own exploration of illustration tinged with a fine arts approach.


These pieces can be seen at full size in my Joe De Mers Flickr set.

Evolution of a Style

Fast forward a half decade from yesterday's 1952 pieces by De Mers and you see something interesting happening...


Its been said that all the other story illustrators who worked in the major magazines of the 50's looked to Al Parker - because he was constantly experimenting with new approaches to the familiar romance scenarios so often asked for by clients. Was this the case for De Mers as well?


From his fully painted illustrations of the early 50's we now see him doing some interesting experimentation. The figures are still realistically painted - but the supporting elements have a nice graphic quality that suggests mood and location.


And by 1959, De Mers is abandoning his earlier formal realism almost completely for a more fanciful and personal style. This evolution will continue in the next few years... as we'll see tomorrow.

These pieces can be seen at full size in my Joe De Mers Flickr set.

Joe De Mers

How to follow this past week's magnum opus on Andy Virgil? I thought perhaps a look at the work of Virgil's mentor, Joe De Mers, might provide a sort of continuity.


These two pieces from McCall's magazine seem particularly appropriate: Andy Virgil was apprenticing for De Mers and others at The Cooper Studio in 1951 and the first part of '52. I like to imagine he might have been present - perhaps even assisted - when Joe De Mers painted these illustrations.


These pieces can be seen at full size in my Joe De Mers Flickr set.

Andy Virgil - Epilogue

Photos I took of Andy in Kinnelon in the early 1960s.


Jenny took this last photograph of Andy in September 1980, two months before his death.


Studying it now, after all I have just written, I realize how much it fits into the story I have told. Wearing one of the many sweaters I knitted for him, in addition to his typical serious, intent look -- there are those beautiful hands. The one, poised over the chessboard, looks no different than when he lightly held a paintbrush poised over his artwork.

When he died in late November, neither Jen nor I could bear to think of him inside a coffin! We told no one, but the plain pine coffin in the funeral home was empty. On top we placed this photo. Neither did Jen nor I wish to bury Andy in Montclair where we had been so unhappy for so long. Instead, we decided we would fly his ashes to Provincetown, Massachusetts where we three had always been joyful.

On a bitter cold and sunny day, we hired a dune buggy, waited with the driver in a coffee shop on Commercial Street until the tide went out so we could drive the reach to the tip end of Provincetown where the lighthouse stood.

With my own hands, I scooped away the sand and buried his ashes beside Long Point Lighthouse. Whenever you are at the bay where we always stayed, you can see that ‘monument’ we felt was the right one for such a man. And we fancied Andy would have agreed. From there, by day, he could always ‘look’ across the curve of bay and watch the incredible play of light of that place in all seasons. And by night he would have the twinkling cheery lights of the town so long a haven for American artists.

Until 1990, I could not distill this experience into the poem I wanted to write. And then suddenly I did.


LAST NOVEMBER

more ill . . .
fall winds
rattle the window

thru the hospital gown
your shoulder
small as our child’s

the call comes . . .
w/o you

making it thru night
selecting the music
of your life

*

talking to a priest:
“We are not believers
but the family . . . “

no one
in the coffin

at the end
the church empties to Bach’s
Tocatta & Fugue

*

in the back office
of the funeral parlor
the small box

the weight
of your ashes

unbalanced
each step
along the cold street

*

at the airport
Jenny & I
& the box wait

in fog
the bay the sky she & I
rise & soar with you

*

the reach . . .
flocks of gulls rise in sunlight
by the lighthouse



heavier than the sand
each pale handful
from the little box

in the shadow of the lighthouse
rising    sand & ashes
blow from me

the winter sun
dune grasses
bay & ocean glisten on








ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


Here I would like to thank Leif Peng first for loving Andy’s work before he knew anything about him, and then for asking me all the incredible questions that stirred loose these memories and brought them back to the surface to be shared with others who struggle to follow their dreams. Leif has given me the greatest thing any artist thrives upon and that is complete artistic freedom. And he has provided Andy with the full recognition he always deserved.

Andy’s niece, Andrea Luciano Fehrman (who was named after Andy) found Today’s Inspiration by chance, and wrote Leif about me and wrote me about him. Without that, this story would never have been told. I shall always be grateful.

My thanks to Andrea’s mother, my sister-in-law, Ethel Luciano with whom I have also kept in touch all these years. She provided me with details of Andy’s childhood and his teenage years so I could build his story on a solid foundation of truth.

Mario Calafatello, my brother-in-law I thank for the fine photo capturing Andy playing his beloved trumpet to Jenny.

Last, my eternal thanks to my daughter, Jennifer Leigh Virgil Gurchinoff, about whom no parent could say more: she is exactly what Andy and I wanted -- but never thought we’d get. And of course it is she who photographed all of her father’s art for this and continues the line of talent with her photography, and passed the genes on to one little son who, at ten, has never stopped drawing.


Anita Virgil is an internationally anthologized haiku poet. She lives in Forest, Virginia.

Entire contents of these posts on Andy Virgil (both text and pictures) © 2007 Anita Virgil. Nothing may be reproduced without permission of the author.

* The selection of Andy Virgil's original art available from Graphic Collectibles has been expanded.

NOTE: For anyone interested in reading this story in its entirety, click on this new Andy Virgil blog. It will remain available.

Andy Virgil - Part 7: Pyrrhic Victory

Those 3 weeks in London 1964 (with the prospect of work for Andy) were the one respite in years that let us live and be joyful as we had always expected our life together to be -- even though we had to scrape pennies just to get there: all home-sewn clothing for Jen and me. One more necessary economy.

I know there was some work coming in early in the ‘60s, but it was the barest minimum -- the jobs too few and far between. And like childbirth, the pain and its details are suppressed in later years, so I don’t know exactly what year the lawsuit concluded with Rahl or when Andy set out on his own to find a new agent. I know we were losing money with each lawyer who tried unsuccessfully to collect for us. And then Rahl, himself, died. After that, the case finally made it to the docket and Andy himself testified before a judge. Never was I more proud of anything he had done! He stood up and clearly told the truth. I think Rahl’s brother-in-law was there representing the studio. And when Andy sat down, the judge found for us. The entity of Rahl Studios was ordered to reimburse us, in part. That was our Pyrrhic victory.


During the remaining years of the 1960s, Andy was trying all sorts of things to get by as well as to keep himself occupied. He practiced his trumpet, took lessons in N.Y. with Roy Stevens. By 1968, almost nine years of unabated hard times under our belt, together we started teaching art classes in our basement – just to put bread on the table. That bad. Regardless of why we had to do it, all who came to these classes adored Andy, were exhilarated by the teaching they received – and at the end of each night class, they were all happy to come upstairs out of our 1847 fieldstone & hand-hewn timbers basement to gather around the old pine table where I served them my fresh-baked cakes and coffee. And always, there was continuing chatter about art.
And politics.



The local newspaper ran a full page spread about us and our classes.


Our students ranged from three very talented 16-year olds (who declared they’d rather come to our classes than smoke pot!) to older men and women, some dilettantes, but two very serious ones later became professionals. One of those was our former pet teenager! He went into advertising art. I was stunned one day here in Virginia to receive a long distance phone call from him twenty years later! He told me he never forgot us.

Though this art class was exhilarating for us both, it did not remove the underlying growing disillusionment that ate at our own relationship. I had begun the year before this to seriously try writing (which I’d preferred since childhood despite all my training in art). And I had also begun a series of actual-size paintings of local mushrooms that abounded in rainy 1967. I could write and still continue to care for us, for home and for a young child -- and I continued to paint my mushrooms. (Taking some to New York to obtain some reference material -- I had almost no books in the tiny library where we lived-- I was offered instead a one-woman show at the New York Horticultural Society! In 1973 I exhibited 80 of these paintings. That same year I was President of the Haiku Society of America.)

But back to 1967-ish: At first I tried to do short stories for the women’s magazines in hopes of making money. Some encouragement came jotted on the rejection slips. I finally realized I wasn’t cut out for that type of writing. I turned to more serious short stories and also to poetry. By 1969 I had found my milieu and became totally and permanently involved in studying and writing haiku. Some poems written in the remaining Kinnelon years depict the grim "soul state" of that time:


bitterness
from an empty hearth
summer coolness


A rainy day --
even the toilet paper
comes to pieces!


red flipped out
chicken lung
in a cold white sink


(These are in my first collection of poems, A 2nd Flake (1974), now considered a classic in American haiku. Poems from that book have since appeared in many haiku anthologies and books on haiku, e.g. The Haiku Anthology, ed. Cor van den Heuvel, 2nd edition (Simon & Schuster, New York 1986).)


In 1970, Andy painted my portrait and Jen’s.


And our famous model cat who appeared in Good Housekeeping as a kitten, in a photo of our kitchen that appeared in a Swedish magazine, and in a sample that was included in a promo brochure of Andy’s.


By spring of 1971 Andy was hospitalized for about a month with another unidentified lung inflammation. And by that time it was evident we had to sell our lovely house. There was no other way we could figure to obtain money enough to live on. A neighbor’s son was vacating an apartment in Montclair, so that is where we next headed.

An aside: In May 1966, our home -- and white cat -- had been featured in Femina magazine in Sweden in a piece "Over Atlanten efter ideer" or "Over the Atlantic for Ideas". Luckily, I had a Swedish neighbor who translated it all for me. One of Andy’s models, a Swedish beauty named Marika , came out to do a location shoot for Andy in a rowboat on a nearby lake. She fell in love with our house and environs of pond and woods. On returning to Sweden, she told Femina’s home decorating editor about it and one day, out of the blue, a photographer for the magazine called us from New York City and asked if he could come out to take pictures. He arrived a couple of hours later!


Meanwhile, about selling it: I was dealing with a nice young fellow who was my realtor. In no time, as he admired our home and its décor, we spoke more about interior decoration than about selling our house. He said he had a good friend who was an interior decorator who would love to see this place. And then he told me the guy was planning to produce a movie in New Jersey. Film? He was interested in film, too? I told him Andy had become very interested by then in studying film and had been reading up on it, hoped to take film courses at NYU. (He later did.) "Soon as Andy gets out of the hospital," I told this fellow, "we all have to get together." We did. And the three of them hit it off like gangbusters! Within the next couple of years or so they put out one wild movie that had a run on 42nd Street -- among other places. Andy was the Assistant Director. No money, but what a trip and a half that was! The director ultimately ended up in Hollywood as " a comer." I know no more.

Andy’s love of WW1 aircraft as shown in the several samples he painted of flyers and their planes


culminated in Andy’s writing a movie script on Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. It was written from the German point of view. This went on for years and both of us were fascinated by what we were learning. Ultimately, he sent the manuscript to Milos Forman and did receive a very kind letter from him, though nothing else came of that.

Andy built gorgeous model airplanes, two WW1 German ones : a white Gotha bomber (its huge wingspan equal to that of a B-52) and Richthofen’s red Albatros. Years later, at his funeral, I suspended them both from the ceiling of the funeral home: the red Albatros, nose down, and the white Gotha, nose to the clouds. . . And in that room I hung his paintings to replace what was on the walls. I taped some music we loved and the funeral director had it softly playing in the background.

Andy built model race cars like those he painted samples of, made WW 2 tanks with all his own special touches – "spinach" he called these realistic additions like fabric bedrolls on the fenders with tiny leather straps he made to tie them on – those mouthwatering details a miniaturist relishes. These additions made of each a work of art.


Then he turned to doing a ship model of The Gloucester Fisherman c. 1877 -- for a year! It sits on my mantle today. Every miniscule knot authentic. He studied them in a book on knots which I still have. And all the blocks threaded properly through teeny holes Andy hand-drilled, and the rigging of fine threads ever so carefully waxed.

He continued to paint samples: John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Bertrand Russell, Arnold Palmer, Richard Boone, Rowan and Martin.


He took them around New York to try for work. He even tried doing some story boards. Colored inks on bond paper. Funny little commercials he dreamed up. One I recall was of Napoleon with his hand-- as usual -- tucked in his vest. Several frames later, when he takes his hand out of his vest, he is holding multicolored M&Ms! These story boards, alas, were ruined not long ago in a basement flood. They were stored in his huge old black leather portfolio which stood on the concrete floor. It, too, was destroyed.

For a while he was represented by artists, inc. and by artists associates but still, not very many jobs came of these affiliations. Those that came from Trans World Feature Syndicates paid ever so little for 2nd rights. Once we received a request from a magazine in South Africa. Hard-up as we were, we refused to allow them to use Andy’s work because of their long policy of apartheid.

By 1974 and for the next four years, I had to work full time while Andy served as house-husband. And he kept painting samples.


During that time the manager of the insurance company I worked for in the daytime was also involved in a dinner theater group in East Orange at night. A neighbor who lived in our apartment building invited us to a play she was in and from then on, we all became fast friends and Andy volunteered to work as an assistant director for this group. They put on "Hair." Sal Piro who later acted as the flamboyant M.C. in the film, "The Rocky Horror Show," was in "Hair" -- and happened to also be a math teacher. In the Green Room, he would coach Jenny in her algebra lessons! The group performed Neil Simon’s "Prisoner of Second Avenue," "The Fantastiques, " "When Ya Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?" and more. Andy thrived on working closely with the New Jersey actors -- in particular, Bob Ritt who not long after won Best N. J. Actor of the Year, and he especially liked working with one of the directors who later appeared as an extra -- a head shot, full screen -- as a cop in "Dog Day Afternoon;" he was in a play on Broadway with Larry Luckinbill . Many years later I saw him in several made-for-tv detective movies. Jenny even helped out with stage decorations -- she painted the floor graffiti for "Hair" one summer -- and I suggested she NOT include that in her back-to-school "What I Did This Summer" essay! I did the body painting for all the actors in it. Butterflies. They all wanted one and each night before the show, they lined up to have me do their bare bellies and arms. And Andy made one huge back-drop for them. Another wildly fun time for us. But without pay.

Enter Joe Mendola. Andy’s last rep. It was somewhere around 1978 and suddenly the clouds lifted. The siege was over, somehow, and there was work coming in just as it had so many years before.



He was painting again all that year, something for Literary Guild about a hospital was one in 1979. And finally the Silhouette Romances were launched. He did about a dozen. The New York Times ran an article about their success and included one of Andy’s covers. But it was too late. Andy was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1979 and died in November of 1980.

Tomorrow: Epilogue





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


Here I would like to thank Leif Peng first for loving Andy’s work before he knew anything about him, and then for asking me all the incredible questions that stirred loose these memories and brought them back to the surface to be shared with others who struggle to follow their dreams. Leif has given me the greatest thing any artist thrives upon and that is complete artistic freedom. And he has provided Andy with the full recognition he always deserved.

Andy’s niece, Andrea Luciano Fehrman (who was named after Andy) found Today’s Inspiration by chance, and wrote Leif about me and wrote me about him. Without that, this story would never have been told. I shall always be grateful.

My thanks to Andrea’s mother, my sister-in-law, Ethel Luciano with whom I have also kept in touch all these years. She provided me with details of Andy’s childhood and his teenage years so I could build his story on a solid foundation of truth.

Mario Calafatello, my brother-in-law I thank for the fine photo capturing Andy playing his beloved trumpet to Jenny.

Last, my eternal thanks to my daughter, Jennifer Leigh Virgil Gurchinoff, about whom no parent could say more: she is exactly what Andy and I wanted -- but never thought we’d get. And of course it is she who photographed all of her father’s art for this and continues the line of talent with her photography, and passed the genes on to one little son who, at ten, has never stopped drawing.

Anita Virgil is an internationally anthologized haiku poet. She lives in Forest, Virginia.

Entire contents of these posts on Andy Virgil (both text and pictures) © 2007 Anita Virgil. Nothing may be reproduced without permission of the author.

* The selection of Andy Virgil's original art available from Graphic Collectibles has been expanded.

Andy Virgil - Part 6: To London, To London!

His name was Al Landau. He, along with his wife Sheila, and his mother ran Trans-World Features Syndicate with offices in New York, London and Paris. He invited Andy and me to join him one Friday night at the posh restaurant, Top of the Sixes, 666 Fifth Avenue. We looked out over a sparkling New York City as we sipped ice cold martinis. Three sips and I, like the naughty heavy imbiber Dorothy Parker once quipped, was almost "under the host!" (She said, "One more drink and I’ll be under the host." ) More accurately, I was quite jolly. Andy could make it through two whole ones. And he was quite jollier. Al urged us to come to London for he had people interested in Andy’s work there. Could we come immediately? "But the baby . . . ?"

"Baby, too. We have a nanny and a baby almost the same age. They can fit in the same pram."

By the following Tuesday, new passports in hand, we were miraculously flying across the Atlantic on Pan Am – with Jen in tow. We had left Kinnelon, N.J. at 4 a.m. and arrived in London at midnight (our time) with this unsleeping, wildly excited toddler. "Oh see, oh see!" she exclaimed breathlessly in her baby lithspy-whisper as we banked over London’s yellow fog lights. Next day, Al, true to his word, took Jen to stay at his apartment in Hampstead Heath with his three children. I recall leaving Jen nervously with the Landaus’ nanny who was giving her a bath and leaning her backwards. I knew then, Jen had it in for me. She hated having her head tipped backwards for a shampoo!


Al had appointments lined up for Andy. We were deposited in a hotel from which Al picked Andy up each day that September. One morning, preparing to go out, my mechanically-challenged Andy got us locked in the bathroom as he was very seriously jiggling the high door handle and warning me: "Neet, there’s something wrong with this lock so don’t close the door." And he pulled it shut. Click!

It took about a half an hour before they had the room broken into via a second story window and a long ladder from the street. Andy was late for his appointment with a potential client and we learned something about the Brits’ aplomb and disinclination to interfere in others’ business – even when hearing our yells for HELP! then laughter – and then earnest pounding on the walls they passed right by.

There was the time we snuck into Peter Sellers apartment. He lived in the same building and somehow, Al got access to it. Sellers was a big star back then so we were like 3 bad kids on the snoop.

Some days when Andy was free, we would explore and he would take photographs. My favorite place was the Tower of London.


We explored Dickens’ house, Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street, and I had to see Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Wimpole Street one night in fog. And Scotland Yard, Regents Park Zoo, Whitehall and the horse guard, No. 10 Downing Street, and of course, since childhood, A. A. Milne’s "They’re changing guard at Buckingham Palace . . ." I took a wonderful shot of Andy leaning on the great fountain opposite the palace, the wind blowing the edge of his short Paul Stewart raincoat exposing its red lining.

One day we found a restaurant, Finnegan’s, I think it was called, with incredible interiors. Polished brass and etched glass windows and partitions, emerald green velvet seats. But it stunk of boiling fish dishes and we did not eat there. But take photos we did -- while breathing through our mouths. Of course, as all ladies do, I tried out their "loo."

Ah, the loo with its water tank high up and a long brass pull chain and a mahogany toilet seat. The loo where the toilet paper was like squares of waxed paper and bore the advertising pitch:

Jeyes, the first name in hygiene

I collected some in my purse to take to friends back home, adding

"and the last name in comfort!"

I never forgot that bathroom, and even today my guest bath sports a mahogany toilet seat – and above it, a portrait Jenny drew as a child of Queen Elizabeth I. Ruff and all. Aptly, we refer to that as The Throne Room, in earnest. And for remembrance.

One weekend we stayed south of London at Oatlands in Surrey. (We had gone to see the WW2 re-enactment of The Battle of Britain at Biggin Hill, Kent. ) It was formerly a castle owned by Henry VIII. It was also where Elizabeth’s courtier and advisor, Lord Coke, went to retrieve his errant wife. But in 1964 it was a home for the elderly with their nurses. Just like out of a British comedy, if you sat, unwittingly, (and we did) in Someone’s Preferred Chair in the empty telly room. How the resident perfected scowling as he entered and saw us and growled: "You, sir, are in my seat!"

I have a sample of Andy’s done from a photo he took of one of the residents of this lovely place. He looks much like a Rembrandt type portrait of an old man.


Andy and Al played snooker at Oatlands, too. I have photos of him hunkered over the vast oaken table with the bank of low-hanging lamps. We had a blast. Ate a lot of Indian curry. Ate as little English food as possible.

And then it was time to head for home. Andy and I walked and walked searching for a bank to get traveller’s checks cashed. "Straight on!" the cheery Brits told us -- and they never tell you how far!

Once at The Bank of England, I wandered off from Andy and found a wonderful old wooden calendar sitting on a counter. The rest of the bank was done in what passed for English "modern" and so I decided they really did not need this calendar I coveted. It didn’t "go" with their so-called décor. I went to the clerk’s [pronounced "clark"] window to inquire. I told her my opinion of this old thing and – could I buy it?

She disappeared into the back. Spoke to someone. Came back and said ever so politely that no, I could not have that one -- but they did have another in the basement I could have. Should she get it?

"Is it the same as this one?" I pressed.

"No, it is round," she said.

"Well . . . I’ll look at that one, " sez I.

At this point, a small crowd of "clarks" were gathered in the background, curious about this inquiring colonist. Andy came over to me at the window and said, "Let’s go, Neet." And I told him he’d have to wait a minute. I was buying a calendar.

"?"

But knowing me, he sat down and waited. Back came the nice lady with a gorgeous 12" walnut calendar, same mechanism of wooden knobs turning the linen days, date and months.


I was salivating. But I asked, "Are you certain I can’t have the other one?" Cool. I was being cool. She shook her head and then I asked her what I owed her. Again she vanished. Back to the huddle that was growing.

When she returned, she said: "The manager says you may have it but we cannot take any money for it. "

I protested that idea with a lady-like, "Oh I couldn’t possibly!"

"However, since our porter died recently and we are getting together a fund for his widow, if you would care to donate a pound ($2.40 USD) to it, we would be most grateful."

My parting shot as I pressed the 1 ₤ Note under the grill was, since I felt like I’d robbed the bank, " Ummm, could you kindly wrap it? I’d hate to have anyone think I stole it!"

Andy got up with that long-suffering the-wife-goes-shopping look on his face, but once outside the bank I told him what I’d done and showed him the calendar. He loved it too.


I clutched that calendar to my breast all the way across the Atlantic – nevermind the kid! And not a day has gone by in 42 years but what I have scrolled each new day on it. Years later I saw it an old British movie, a period piece of the 19th century called "Hatter’s Castle. "

Tomorrow: Pyrrhic Victory

Anita Virgil is an internationally anthologized haiku poet. She lives in Forest, Virginia.

Entire contents of these posts on Andy Virgil (both text and pictures) © 2007 Anita Virgil. Nothing may be reproduced without permission of the author.

* The selection of Andy Virgil's original art available from Graphic Collectibles has been expanded.

Andy Virgil - Part 5: Something Wrong

The rhythm of our lives altered just as we were ready to move late that spring to our New Jersey home. Though we had smoothly managed all the financing by using our carefully collected savings, there remained only three appliances to be bought from Andy’s next pay check before moving in.


But at Rahl something was wrong. When Andy notified Phil (as soon as we bought our home) he would be vacating his NYC studio space to work from home, the normal discussion of a change in commission from "in-house" rate of 60/40 to "out-of-town" rate of 70/30 unexpectedly turned into a contentious battle.

The only way I can guess why it occurred revolves around the contract Andy had received well before we moved for a dozen McCall’s magazine illustrations. A rare and big deal. It is my belief that the idea of cutting into some of his commissions made Rahl balk. He refused to discuss the matter further.

But that was not all he did. When it came time for him to pay Andy’s current $5000 in commissions, he withheld it. For the first time ever, we had to borrow $1000 for our 3 basic appliances from my kind friend (the same fellow who had served as my ‘cover’ when I was surreptitiously seeing Andy). And we proceeded to limp along on what little we had left figuring all would soon be resolved.


After months when no payment of those commissions was forthcoming, Andy finally decided he had to file suit against Rahl for them. I agreed wholeheartedly. It was unconscionable. At that point, when the word spread in the studio this was occurring, one of the artists came to Andy to verify -- almost in a whisper -- that it was so. Of course, said Andy. The fellow then disclosed to Andy that Rahl had withheld some commission monies from him. For over a year or more . . . Our eyes widened. "And from some of the other guys, too," he lamely trailed off.

They did nothing about this thievery. It was lesser amounts than was owed Andy, so they meekly ‘took the hit and kept quiet.’ Once notice was served upon an incredulous Rahl that Andy was suing him and the wheels slowly began turning legally, Andy was warned one day that if he pursued this course he would never work in New York again!

At first this threat seemed silly bombast. Until the months -- and then the years unwound before us with barely any work at all! No matter how we tightened our belts, we could hardly live our modest life, for jobs seemed to slowly be going elsewhere. We were living below poverty level. I recall Andy could not afford to join the Society of Illustrators, no less indulge in the social activities they offered.

One odd occurrence relating to SOI was that they did hang an illustration of Andy’s on Park Avenue in one of their shows. It was of William F. Buckley, Jr. A small narrow but delicious painting he did as a sample. We were notified it was stolen right off the wall. Popped no doubt into an attache case or a portfolio. Later on, I urged Andy to do another one of it for it was one of my favorites. Even if neither of us liked Buckley’s political point of view, we savored his elegant use of the English language.


The 1960s were another kind of turning point in illustration art. Fewer pieces of fiction appeared in the women’s magazines. Usually there were at least three per issue. Photography was in the ascendancy, competition among the illustrators was stiff for the two per issue stories, then one per, and then even this well pretty much dried up. And later, when there was an upswing in art, it had evolved into quite different kinds from that of the ‘50s. Even advertising art was heavily using photographers.

Most New York illustrators saw the writing on the wall and gradually turned elsewhere to try to make a living in this new environment. I know few firsthand details of how others with Rahl managed except that Fred Siebel became an art director, Herb Saslow sold mutual funds and exhibited some of his surreal romantic paintings to a Pennsylvania museum. Spot man, Oscar Barshak always had depended primarily on his interior decorating. Dorothy Monet would undoubtedly come out on top . . . of whatever she chose to do. Just prior to that time, though, I think she had married a psychiatrist and had a baby. This downturn in illustration likely had little effect on her. And many years later, as I mentioned in Part 3, her writing abilities were displayed in the PBS program on Mary Cassatt.





Some of the artists in the dry sixties banded together to create their own studios. Fred Otnes did. There was artists associates, who eventually took Andy. But he got almost no work through them. There was artists, inc., too. Slim pickings.


Through those years Andy created samples hoping to get work. Not a bad thing. Samples, for him, represented freedom from constraints. He did what he loved and the vitality and freshness, tenderness and beauty of them tells that story.


And, using them, he tried to obtain jobs in illustration, tried also to land a new rep which he did. Three times. But until he hooked up with Joe Mendola there was hardly enough work coming in to live on.

When I first sent examples of the broad spectrum of Andy’s work to Leif for the Today’s Inspiration project, this was his reaction: "I was stunned speechless. . . How could such a talent as Andy not have received more recognition? The work in this package. . . each piece more beautiful than the last. . ." And again, when he received more photos of Andy’s originals, he wrote he was "completely overwhelmed by the wealth of beautiful images . . ."

How could such a talent as Andy not have received more recognition?

That question nagged at my heart constantly, even as I became more and more disheartened at our grim "turn of luck." Far worse than the straits we were in, the most painful thing for both of us to accept was what was happening to one of his caliber. Andy was not a vain man. Not in the least. But he knew the value of his own ability. And I certainly was a realist and could compare what he did to the work of his contemporaries. It was even more chilling as the years ground us down, to harbor the thought we were being engulfed by the ghost of the McCarthy era when so many great talents were blacklisted . We hardly dared utter the word lest we sound paranoid. But it was the only thing that seemed to make sense.

Yet, good things did transpire, even in this lean time. Andy flew to Detroit in March of 1963 to judge an art director’s show with Bernie Fuchs and Art Director Clark Maddock. It was billed as Top Drawers in the Art Biz.


In June of 1963, our daughter, Jennifer Leigh Virgil, was born and Andy did many paintings of her, from earliest infancy into her teens (when he used her to illustrate an early ‘70s Literary Guild Doubleday job, The Cuppi, I shot the photos for it. Andy posed as the villain strangling Jen as his victim! )

A day or so after she was born, while I was in the hospital recuperating from Jen’s birth, Andy had gone to Lancaster, Pa. to shoot the auto races. As usual, totally absorbed in what he was doing, right down on the track shooting
the on-coming Formula 1s


suddenly the pace car veered right towards him. Luckily for Jen and me, somebody shoved him and his Rollei out of the way. With casual relish, he told me that hair-raising tale when he came to visit wee Jen and me next day. The almost-widow and orphan.


Most of the Jenny paintings were done as samples. Below is Jen at Old Rhinebeck Museum, New York.


But a couple ended up published: the American Airlines poster (see Part 4) and one used by Woman’s Own magazine out of London (below).


The following year, 1964, Andy was approached by an agent dealing in second rights for the European market. They paid very little -- but they paid.

Tomorrow: To London, To London!

Anita Virgil is an internationally anthologized haiku poet. She lives in Forest, Virginia.

Entire contents of these posts on Andy Virgil (both text and pictures) © 2007 Anita Virgil. Nothing may be reproduced without permission of the author.

* The selection of Andy Virgil's original art available from Graphic Collectibles has been expanded.