Modest "Fedya" Aronstam was born in Kovno, Russia on February 22, 1871. His father was Lazar Aronstam, a pharmacist. His mother's name is not known. He had a brother and a sister. In 1888 at age 17 he immigrated to the United States by himself. He moved to New York City and lived on the Lower East Side in the Jewish ghetto.
In 1890 he met the twenty-year-old future anarchist, Emma Goldman, through a cousin, Alexander Berkman, and fell in love. The three friends lived together in a communal apartment. In 1892 they plotted to assassinate Henry Clay Frick to support his striking steel workers. Frick was seriously wounded in the attempt, but he eventually recuperated. Berkman spent fourteen years in jail for shooting the gun.
According to the artist's daughter, "After the failed attempt on Frick's life my father returned to finish the job. The pockets of his trousers were filled with dynamite. He intended to blow up Frick's house. When he got off the train he passed a newsstand and his eyes fell on a headline: AARON STAMM TO KILL FRICK." Evidently some crony had spilled the beans! He dumped the dynamite and fled. After this incident his actual last name, Aronstam, was too notorious, so he changed it to "Stein." He remained friendly with Emma Goldman and his jailed cousin. He continued to contribute money regularly, but he drifted away from the Anarchist Movement.
It is not known where he studied art, but by 1898 his first published assignments were pen and ink work for courtroom reporting for The New York World, The New York Herald, The New York Sun, and other newspapers.
On June 18, 1899, at age twenty-eight, he married twenty-year-old Marcia Mishkin. She was an artist and also a photographer. They lived at 7 West 47th Street, in midtown Manhattan. They both worked at home in their shared stuido. In 1902 their daughter, Luba M. Stein, was born. He and his wife became naturalized citizens in 1910.
That same year he began to sell freelance pulp covers to All Story, Argosy, The Cavalier, Munsey's, and People's Magazine.
During the 1920s he was a cover artist for Clues, Complete Stories, Detective Stories, Far West Illustrated, and Love Story.
He remained strongly sympathetic to the Bolshevik Revolution until the 1930s, when he made a trip to Russia. He also visited his cousin and Emma Goldman in exile during that same trip.
During the 1930s he continued to paint covers for Street & Smith pulp magazines, such as Crime Busters, Complete Stories, Detective Stories, Love Story, and Unknown. He also did many covers for the Street & Smith magazine Picture Play, which featured elegant portraits of glamorous Hollywood stars. In the 1939 he moved to Hollywood, California, and worked in portraiture.
When Emma Goldman died in 1940 her body was permitted to return to the U.S. for burial in a suburban Chicago cemetery, where a monument was erected, for which he created her memorial portrait in relief for the bronze plaque.
In 1943 he returned to New York City, and he moved to 25 Jones Street in Flushing, Queens, where he continued to create covers for many Street & Smith pulp magazines, including Astounding Science Fiction, Love Story, Mystery Magazine, Romantic Range, Doc Savage, and The Shadow.
In the 1950s he concentrated on painting portraits. On Monday the 24th of February in 1958 he was awarded the prize of the Art League of Long Island for his work.
Two days later Modest Stein died in Booth Memorial Hospital in Flushing, Queens, at the age of eighty-seven on February 26, 1958.
According to his obituary in the New York Times, "Modest Stein was an old-time pen-and-ink newspaper artist.
© David Saunders 2009 |
