Dean Cornwell was born March 5, 1892 in Louisville, Kentucky. His father was Charles Louis Cornwell, who was a civil engineer and an expert draftsman. His mother's maiden name Margaret Dean, which became Dean Cornwell's first name.
He had a natural talent for drawing, and in high school his cartoons appeared in the school newspaper and year books. After he graduated in 1910 at the age of eighteen he worked as a cartoonist for The Louisville Herald.
In 1911 he moved to Chicago to study at the Chicago Art Institute, and to work on the art staff of The Chicago Tribune.
In 1915 he moved to New York City to seek a career in commercial illustration and to study at the Art Students League. He also studied at a summer school in Leonia New Jersey with Harvey Dunn, who inspired him greatly.
In 1918 he married Mildred Kirkham. They raised a daughter, named Patricia, and a son, Kirkham, whose first name is also his mother's maiden name, Kirkham. In 1924 the family moved to Mamaroneck, NY.
In the 1920s he taught commercial illustration to several future pulp artists at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn such as H. Winfield Scott, Walter Baumhofer, and A. Leslie Ross.
He sold slick magazine illustrations to American Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, Life, Redbook, and The Saturday Evening Post. He was nicknamed,"The Dean of Illustrators."
In 1927 he began a five-year mural project for the Los Angeles Public Library. He also painted murals for Rockefeller Center, the 1939 World's Fair in NYC, and he continued to accept mural commisions off and on for the rest of his life.
Although he was too old to serve in WWII, he created many patriotic posters and advertisements at the time. After the war he painted advertisements for General Motors, Seagram's, CocaCola, and Goodyear.
According to James Montgomery Flagg, "Cornwell is the illustrator par excellence. His work is approached by few and overtopped by none. He is a born artist."
From 1954 onward, he lived in a studio apartment on West 67th Street, where he was cared for by his model, Bill Magner, who had posed for several pulp artists, most notably as both The Shadow and The Spider.
Dean Cornwell died at age 68 on December 4, 1960.
© David Saunders 2009 |
