Jerry George Janes was born June 23, 1902 in the Bronx, New York. His father was Aaron Janes, a Russian Jew that emigrated from Minsk in 1880, where the original family name was Janovski. His mother was Gussie Janes, a Roumanian Jew that emigrated in 1886. She was the mother of six children -- Loretta, Jacob, Herbert, Ida, Martha, and George, who was the youngest in the family. They lived in a two-story building at 360 East 183rd Street. His father ran a company that manufactured caps.
All of the children in the family received exceptionally good educations and went on to professional careers.
In 1920 he met Janet Blair McCutchan, a native New Yorker of Scottish-Irish ancestry, who was also raised in the Bronx. She was fourteen years old and he was eighteen. She was sitting on a park bench in the New York Botanical Gardens, where she spent the Summer reading books while recovering from a broken ankle. It was love at first sight.
In 1921 after completing high school he went to college, where he joined the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps. He left college in 1924 and served in the U.S. Army until 1926.
He studied art at The American Academy of Design, as well as the Art Students League.
In 1928 his interior story illustrations began to appear in the magazine College Life.
In 1929, after nine years of courtship, he married Janet, who worked as a statistician at The National City Bank. They rented an apartment for $65 a month at 3136 Perry Avenue in the Bronx. They soon moved to a brand new apartment building, which was owned by a family friend, on 205th Street and Webster Avenue, where their son, Harvey, was born in 1930. Along with their new apartment, he also rented the penthouse in the same building for use as an art studio. It was specially designed with impressive artist skylights. It seemed like a remarkable luxury to commute to work each day on the elevator.
During the 1930s his cover paintings began to appear on pulp magazines, such as Black Mask, Secret Agent-X, and Ten Detective Aces, and Thrilling Detective.
After World War II he continued to paint freelance covers for the long-running pulp magazine, Ranch Romances, for which he painted his last pulp magazine cover in 1955.
He went on to have a distinguished career as a regularly published illustrator with Road & Track Magazine. His freelance illustrations also appeared in Mechanics Illustrated, Popular Science, and True.
In 1957 the family moved to Port Washington, NY, a nice suburban town on Long Island's North Shore.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s he illustrated books for young adults, most of which were about sports, such as badminton, diving, and go-karts. Two of his most popular books in this genre were The Young Sportsman's Guide to Sports Car Racing by Harvey B. Janes (the artist's son) and Sports Illustrated Book of Track & Field Running Events by James O. Dunaway.
In 1970 he retired from commercial illustration and moved to Sanford Florida.
J. George Janes died in Casselberry, FL, at the age of eighty-seven on July 14, 1989.
© David Saunders 2009 |
