Sunday, April 10, 2022

1923 - 26 Dodge Brothers car advertisements illustrated by William Meade Prince

William Meade Prince was fifteen when he moved to Birmingham, Ala., where he worked as a railway clerk, and met his future wife, then he moved to New York and attended the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, married in 1915, was magazine illustrator in the 1920s while living in Westport Ct, then moved to North Carolina to take over as head of the Art Department at the University of North Carolina. Inthe early 40s, he made the Sunday comic strip Aladdin Jr for Kings Feature Syndicate, and during World War II he produced drawings and posters in aid of the war effort. He dies of suicide pistol shot through the head at age 58, in 1951. About one year after publishing his childhood story. I'd like to know why, was it the cultural shift away from illustrators now that magazines were using photographs? Illness? Depression? Cancer? Oncoming blindness or Parkinson's?


notice that in 1925, those balloon tires were a sales pitch, coincidence that I just posted about them








you can see that ebay sellers can't use a scanner, or allow us to enjoy the art for free... the miserable bastards think these out of focus images will force us to purchase. Nope. I'll use this, and enjoy it, and look around the internet to see if some university, library, or art gallery has the original painting

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313&_nkw=William+Meade+Prince&_sacat=0






if you, like me, ever tried to use watercolors, you know how difficult it is, and how those who have mastered it use water color paint so effectively 


it would be un-Amercian of me to not point out that ice cream was certified healthy by the Research Council of Ice Cream Industry




here at Just A Car Guy world headquarters, we have standards to maintain, and won't hear of any lack of ice cream positive advertising. And that research council was advertising the hell out of ice cream as nutritious. There's a LOT of those ads... but there weren't many refrigerators back in 1927



getting back to William Meade Prince





ain't that cool? An original game day program for sale on Ebay, and again, would it kill these people to use a damn scanner? https://www.ebay.com/itm/255476807444?hash=item3b7b9ab714:g:mnkAAOSwR2liTz7J   and here is the original painting. Quite clever


"Bears and Trojans"  and here's a zoomable copy for close up appreciation https://ackland.emuseum.com/objects/18280/bears--trojans?ctx=ca3330d44b9fc7b195b3092569001326ba0d0595&idx=33




how has this artist never came to my attention until now?  That painting of the guys with plates and fists ought to be somewhere in every kitchen! It's a hoot!

he may not have painted the cover of every Country Gentleman magazine, but he sure did a lot of them




  In 1942 and 1943, Prince illustrated the newspaper comic 'Aladdin Junior', as well as its topper 'Secrets of Magic', which was written by Les Forgrave. For King Features and the Book-of-the-Month Club, he illustrated the comic adaptation of 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn' in 1944.



https://ackland.emuseum.com/people/1285/william-meade-prince/objects?filter=classifications%3Aprints#filters

AND he illustrated comic strips? Aladdin Jr, I haven't heard of it, but it's obviously aimed at entertaining kids. Well, I think this will help with my Comic Con press pass application! 




these paintings are from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill art museum, the Ackland Museum, and their very good website allows for each of these to be zoomed in on for close up appreciation.  https://ackland.emuseum.com/people/1285/william-meade-prince;jsessionid=DDF3F5231D1316EE04D18013364327F3/objects













I am such a fan of book plates, I think they are called

And it's a mystery to me why Wikipedia doesn't have jack about him... I've actually posted more information than Wikipedia. 


I don't think I covered it, but, he did magazine cover art for the Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and was the illustrator for Beech Nut gum advertising, Crisco, Van Camps, Quaker Oats, Chesterfield, etc 



2 comments:

  1. I have never heard of this artist. Yes, as a gent has already remarked, "Thanks for the sleuthing!" Great commercial artistry. Sorry to learn that he took his life.

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    1. Thank you, and yeah, the sad thing is learning someone was so down, so out, and without a friend that could help that they punched out. One of my co-workers at the last job didn't tell anyone what a spiral his world became, and just didn't show up to work one weekend. Some of the guys pieced it all together later with help from his mom who was in the know about his alimony payment, child support, etc
      This artist was really damn good

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