James Allen St. John was born October 1, 1872 in Chicago. His parents were Susan and Josephus Allen St. John. In 1880 he moved to Paris with his mother, who was an accomplished painter. He spent his childhood in Europe, where his exposure to great museum collections inspired him to study art.
In 1883 at age 11 he moved to New York City and attended public school.
In 1888 at age 16 he moved to an uncle's ranch in San Joaquin Valley in Southern California, where he painted landscapes and studied under Eugene Torrey, a student of the Ecole des Beau-Arts.
In 1891 at age 19 he returned to New York City, where he studied with William Merrit Chase at the Art Students League.
His first published assignments were for The New York Herald in 1898, where he continued to sell freelance illustrations for several years.
By 1902 at age 30 he was a reputable landscape and portrait artist in New York City.
In 1904 he moved to Chicago, where he met Ellen M. Munger while learning to type at secretarial school. They married on November 11, 1905.
In 1908 at age 36 he returned to Paris to study at the Academie Julian.
In 1912 he moved to 3 East Ontario Street in Chicago and began to work as a commercial artist for Midwest publishers of books, newspapers and magazines. He worked for A. C. McClurg, the publisher of several Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. In 1915 he illustrated The Return of Tarzan, the first of many ERB novels for which the artist is most renowned.
In 1917 he began to teach painting and illustration at the Art Institute of Chicago and the American Academy of Art, and he continued to teach for twenty years.
In 1918 at the age of forty-six he was too old to serve in WWI, but he produced several patriotic posters for recruitment and Liberty Bonds to support the war effort.
In the late 1920s he painted magazine covers for The Green Book, The Red Book, and Blue Book.
During the years of the Great Depression he worked for The Boy's World, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and Weird Tales.
In 1942 at the age of seventy he was too old to require draft registration during WWII.
In the 1940s and the 1950s he worked for Amazing Stories and Mystic Magazine.
J. Allen St. John died at age eighty-four in May 23, 1957.
© David Saunders 2009 |
