James Montgomery Flagg
James Montgomery Flagg | |
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James Montgomery Flagg, 1915, photographed by Arnold Genthe
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Born | Pelham Manor, New York, United States |
June 18, 1877
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. New York City, United States |
Nationality | American |
Occupation | artist and illustrator |
James Montgomery Flagg (June 18, 1877 – May 27, 1960) was an American artist and illustrator. He worked in media ranging from fine art painting to cartooning, but is best remembered for his political posters.[1]
Life and career
Flagg was born on June 18, 1877 in Pelham Manor, New York.[1]
He was enthusiastic about drawing from a young age, and had illustrations accepted by national magazines by the age of 12 years. By 14 he was a contributing artist for Life magazine, and the following year was on the staff of another magazine, Judge. From 1894 through 1898, he attended the Art Students League of New York. He studied fine art in London and Paris from 1898–1900, after which he returned to the United States, where he produced countless illustrations for books, magazine covers, political and humorous cartoons, advertising, and spot drawings. Among his creations was a comic strip that appeared regularly in Judge from 1903 until 1907, about a tramp character titled Nervy Nat.[2]
In 1915, he accepted commissions from Calkins and Holden to create advertisements for Edison Photo and Adler Rochester Overcoats but only on the condition that his name would not be associated with the campaign.[3]
He created his most famous work in 1917, a poster to encourage recruitment in the United States Army during World War I. It showed Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer (inspired by a British recruitment poster showing Lord Kitchener in a similar pose) with the caption "I Want YOU for U.S. Army".[4] Over four million copies of the poster were printed during World War I, and it was revived for World War II. Flagg used his own face for that of Uncle Sam (adding age and the white goatee), he said later, simply to avoid the trouble of arranging for a model. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt praised his resourcefulness for using his own face as the model. By some accounts though, Flagg had a neighbor, Walter Botts, pose for the piece.
At his peak, Flagg was reported to have been the highest paid magazine illustrator in America.[5] In 1946, Flagg published his autobiography, Roses and Buckshot. Apart from his work as an illustrator, Flagg painted portraits which reveal the influence of John Singer Sargent. Flagg's sitters included Mark Twain and Ethel Barrymore; his portrait of Jack Dempsey now hangs in the Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery. In 1948, he appeared in a Pabst Blue Ribbon magazine ad which featured the illustrator working at an easel in his New York studio with a young lady standing at his side and a tray with an open bottle of Pabst and two filled glasses sat before them.[6]
James Montgomery Flagg died on May 27, 1960 in New York City.[1] He was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery.
Legacy
Ft. Knox Kentucky has a parade field named and dedicated to James Flagg. It is called Flagg Field and located behind the Ft. Knox Hotel.
Flagg spent summers in Biddeford Pool, Maine and his home, the James Montgomery Flagg House, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[7]
Gallery
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William McKinley Vanity Fair 2 February 1899.jpg
President McKinley, illustration in Vanity Fair magazine, 1899
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The Smart Set (Magazine cover) 1911
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The cover of the popular novel Officer 666 by Barton Currie and Augustin MacHugh
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Flagg's famous Uncle Sam recruitment poster
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Uncle Sam Boys and Girls! 1917 war poster
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Uncle Sam with empty Treasury
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Columbia urges planting Victory Gardens
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The Navy Needs You! Don't Read American History, Make It!
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Wake Up America, Civilization Calls Every Man Woman and Child!
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Together We Win
(World War I) -
World War II US Army poster showing Uncle Sam holding spanner. Presumably released between VE day and VJ day.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Marschall, Rick (May, 1985). "The Comic Obsessions of James Montgomery Flagg". Nemo, the Classic Comics Library, No. 11.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Smith, David S., "A Stately New Exhibition Space For New Boston Museum Of American Art", Antiques And The Arts Online, April 11, 2006. accessed May 8, 2009.[dead link]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
Further reading
- Flagg, James Montgomery. Roses and Buckshot. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1946. OCLC 517299
- Flagg, James Montgomery, and Susan E. Meyer. James Montgomery Flagg. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1974. ISBN 0823018350
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to [[commons:Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 506: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).|Lua error in Module:WikidataIB at line 506: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).]]. |
- Works by James Montgomery Flagg at Project Gutenberg
- Lua error in Module:Internet_Archive at line 573: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- James Montgomery Flagg's 1917 "I Want You" Poster and other works at the Wayback Machine (archived October 28, 2004)
- James Montgomery Flagg on JVJ Publishing site
- James Montgomery Flagg artwork can be viewed at American Art Archives web site
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- Pages with broken file links
- Articles with dead external links from June 2013
- Articles with hCards
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- Articles with Internet Archive links
- James Montgomery Flagg
- 1877 births
- 1960 deaths
- American cartoonists
- American illustrators
- Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx)
- American poster artists
- People from Pelham Manor, New York
- Art Students League of New York alumni
- Artists from New York City
- Vanity Fair (British magazine) artists
- World Digital Library related
- 20th-century American painters