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J. C. Leyendecker — news, coverage & facts — IJR

Before 1902: Chicago and Paris

As a staff artist at J. Manz & Company J. C. Leyendecker produced 60 Bible illustrations for the Powers Brothers Company, cover and interior illustrations for The Interior magazine, and frontispiece art for The Inland Printer. He also produced artwork for posters and book covers for the Chicago publisher E. A. Weeks. From ca.1895-1902, he provided artwork for the marketing materials of the Chicago men's clothier Hart, Schaffner & Marx.

While in Paris, J. C. Leyendecker continued providing art to Hart, Schaffner & Marx, produced artwork for 12 covers of The Inland Printer, and won a contest (out of 700 entries) for the poster and cover of the midsummer 1896 issue of The Century Magazine, which garnered national newspaper and magazine coverage.

Upon his return from Paris in June 1897, Leyendecker illustrated for a range of mostly local clients including Hart, Schaffner & Marx, the Chicago department store Carson, Pirie & Scott, the Eastern Illinois Railroad, the Northern Pacific Railroad, Woman's Home Companion magazine, the stone cutter's trade journal Stone, Carter's monthly, the bird hobbyist magazine The Osprey, and books including Conan Doyle's Micah Clarke and Octave Thanet's A Book of True Lovers. He also painted 132 scenes of America for L. W. Yaggy's laptop panorama of Biblical scenes titled Royal Scroll published by Powers, Fowler & Lewis (Chicago).

During the 1890s, Leyendecker was active in Chicago's arts community. He exhibited with and attended social events by the Palette and Chisel Club, the Art Students League, and the Chicago Society of Artists. In December 1895, some of his posters were exhibited at the Siegel, Cooper & Company department store in Chicago. In January 1898 his posters for covers of The Inland Printer were exhibited at the Kimball Cafetier (Chicago).

During his 1895–97 time studying in Paris, J. C. Leyendecker's work won four awards at the Académie Julian and one of his paintings titled "Portrait of My Brother" was exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1897. One of his posters for Hart, Schaffner & Marx titled "The Horse Show" was exhibited as part of the award-winning display of American manufacturers' posters at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris.

Leyendecker's first cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post was published in its May 20, 1899 issue, launching a forty-four-year association with the magazine. Eventually, his work would appear on 322 covers of the magazine, introducing many iconic visual images and traditions including the New Year's Baby, the pudgy red-garbed rendition of Santa Claus, flowers for Mother's Day, and firecrackers on the 4th of July.

Notable works

J. C. Leyendecker commonly worked with oil on canvas. Many of Leyendecker's paintings focused on the clothing worn by the subjects, their form, and the way light reflected off the fabric, and were used as advertisements. His style utilizes cross hatching, smooth shading, and harsh lighting, and is distinct and recognizable.

Leyendecker’s 1911 “Cluett Dress Shirt” ad features two men in white-tie attire gazing at each other. Leyendecker uses cross-hatched oil brushstrokes to create a blank background and blend the subjects into that background. This piece is an advertisement for clothing, hence focusing on the lighting, silhouette, and folds of the suits to demonstrate its high quality and material. The two men are staring at each other in an intense manner that suggests intimacy.

Portrait of an American Sailor was painted in 1918, and it is believed to be an image of Leyendecker’s lover Charles Beach.

Man and Woman Dancing (1923) features a man resembling Charles Beach dancing with a woman. The man’s suit is indistinguishable from the background aside from his white cuffs, gloves, and boutonniere -- his pose is up to viewer interpretation. Leyendecker’s technique of blending his subjects with a dark background was to make the subjects and the lighting stand out. Light is focused on the woman’s dress and hair, giving the appearance of an expensive silk dress and smooth, styled hair.

The Kuppenheimer Clothing Company ad was painted in 1929 and also features Charles Beach. The focus of the advertisement is the suits, and the three models wearing them all resemble Beach. It is another piece that has homoerotic undertones, since the three men are looking at each other and not at the mermaid between them.

Couple Descending Staircase is a 1932 oil painting that depicts a man and a woman walking down a gilded staircase. It’s another example of Leyendecker’s use of negative space to create form, similar to Man and Woman Dancing. This is another painting in which Leyendecker did not paint a background, blending the black of the man’s suit into the shadow. The only scenery present is a rail and a hanging chandelier in the foreground.

Legacy

As a frequent cover for the Saturday Evening Post from 1899-1943, Leyendecker's work both reflected and helped mold multiple visual aspects of the era's culture in America. The mainstream image of Santa Claus as a jolly fat man in a red fur-trimmed coat was popularized by Leyendecker, as was the image of the New Year Baby. The tradition of giving flowers as a gift on Mother's Day was started by Leyendecker's May 30, 1914 Saturday Evening Post cover depicting a young bellhop carrying hyacinths. It was created as a commemoration of President Woodrow Wilson's declaration of Mother's Day as an official holiday that year.

Leyendecker was a chief influence upon, and friend of, Norman Rockwell, who was a pallbearer at Leyendecker's funeral. In particular, the early work of Norman Rockwell for the Saturday Evening Post bears a strong superficial resemblance to that of Leyendecker. While today it is generally accepted that Norman Rockwell established the best-known visual images of Americana, in many cases they are derivatives of Leyendecker's work, or reinterpretations of visual themes established by Rockwell's idol.

The visual style of Leyendecker's art inspired the graphics in The Dagger of Amon Ra, a video game, as well as designs in Team Fortress 2, a first-person shooter for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

Leyendecker's work inspired George Lucas and will be part of the collection of the anticipated Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

Leyendecker's Beat-up Boy, Football Hero, which appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post on November 21, 1914, sold for $4.12 million on May 7, 2021. The previous world record for a J. C. Leyendecker original was set in December 2020, when Sotheby's sold his 1930 work Carousel Ride for $516,100.

Costume designer Carol Cutshall used Leyendecker's illustrations as inspiration for the costumes created for Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire on AMC, a 2022 television series adaptation of the 1976 novel by American author Anne Rice. Of the clothing designed specifically for the male characters Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt, Cutshall said, in part, "And the whole first two episodes, their style sense in many ways is a love letter to Leyendecker. Some things are just perfectly pulled from – like their formalwear, their tuxedos that they wear to the opera in 1917, and the black pinstripe suit with the green tie and the white boutonniere that Lestat wears to the du Lac family home for dinner – those are from a Leyendecker illustration." Cutshall also referenced Louis and Lestat's clothing being created from Leyendecker's illustrations as a way to draw a parallel between Louis and Lestat, who were shown in the series as having to keep their romantic relationship hidden from the public in the 1910s and 1920s, and Leyendecker and his life partner, Charles Beach.

J. C. Leyendecker

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J. C. Leyendecker

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J. C. Leyendecker across IJR

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Early life

Career

Before 1902: Chicago and Paris

After 1902: New York City and New Rochelle

Decline of career

Personal life

Sexuality

Residences

Death, burial, disposition of estate

Body of work

Museum holdings

Notable works

Legacy

Films and plays

J. C. Leyendecker across IJR