I published this just the other day:
Lex Anteinternet: February 12, 1921. Covers, Installations, Rebelli...: February 12, 1921, was a Saturday, and hence the day that a lot of print magazines hit the magazine stands, and mailboxes. Leslie's feat...
When I did, I also put up the posers and photos on Reddit's 100 Years Ago sub reddit, the reddit that features things that occurred exactly 100 years ago on the mark.
At one time Saturdays were the days on which weekly magazines hit the stands. It made sense as people worked every other day of the week, but Saturdays they normally had off. It's been interesting in and of itself how that's worked, as labor strove for years for a two day weekend, Saturday and Sunday. Traditionally laborers got one day off, the same day everyone else got off, Sunday. Achieving the extra day off was a big deal. We've managed to actually retreat on that enormously as every retail everything on earth is open on Saturday. . . and on Sunday, any more. The Internet, moreover, has intruded on the weekend off for everyone.
But I digress.
When I put up century old cover illustrations, sometimes I get comments here or there. I knew that there would be this time.
I put up three, but two of them have items that could spark commentary, and one did. Interestingly, the one that actually had a bit of a hidden meaning didn't spark any, and the one that didn't, did.
Here's the first one:
Leslie's was a magazine that dated back to 1855 and which started off as Frank Leslie's Illustrated News. As the name would indicate, it featured illustrations. Started by journalist Henry Carter, the magazine was carried on by his widow after his death. She was a suffragist and the magazine reflected that. Sold in 1902, it continued on as before, very updated, and given its history, it very frequently featured early feminist themes, such as the issue that ran this week, a century ago.
The term "lumberjack" is a Canadian one, and while I don't know its etymology, the "jack" part of that term isn't likely to refer the the name "Jack", which basically means a laborer. Therefore its unlikely that there was ever a word "lumber jane", but Leslie's depicted a female lumber worker on the cover.
Where there female lumberjacks in 1921? Probably not many, if any, but Leslie's thought there ought to be, and it was taking a stand of a sort eons ahead of its time.
Leslie's would cease publication in 1922.
Nobody commented on the illustration at all. Probably didn't register with the modern eye, and if it did, it probably didn't seem to be sending any sort of message.
The illustration that did strike the modern eye as sending a message is one that wasn't intended to.
The Saturday Evening Post a century ago ran an illustration by Frederic Stanley. When I posted it, I knew that there'd be comments about it, and there was.
Plenty of viewers of this illustration saw an outright homosexual depiction. Others saw a veiled one, in which the artist must be meaning to send a gender bending message sub silentio. What else could a depiction of a young man in a dress holding hands with another young man mean?
Well, not much really.
This takes us back to Valentine's Days past.
Even when I was very young there were still Valentine's Day masquerade parties. I don't know why, but there were. A person could speculate on the concept and what it tried to encourage, but masquerade parties in general were something that was more common at one time than now. Now, they seem limited to Halloween. Not always so.
Indeed, the 1920s were oddly big in general on masquerade parties and naturally there'd be some associated with Valentine's Day. Probably a lot of them actually. Another example, in fact, from the same year, 1921, can be seen here:
A person can pretty safely assume that Frederic Stanley wasn't trying to send any secret homosexual messages in his February 12, 1921 Saturday Evening Post cover illustration. And it would be additionally safe to assume that the Saturday Evening Post wouldn't have been interested in sending any either. No matter what a person's opinion may be now, such a thing would have been overwhelmingly condemned then.
Indeed, it's interesting to note that one commenter on the Reddit sub immediately wondered if the illustration was by J. C. Leyendecker. It isn't, and it doesn't even look like one. It looks in fact a lot more like an early Norman Rockwell, who is often very mistakenly assumed to have done every cover illustration for the Saturday Evening Post. Leyendecker in fact did a lot of them and has a very distinct style. Quite a few of his cover illustrations can be found on this site, as there are no many. Leyendecker actually probably was homosexual, and actually lived for years with his primary male model. That was undoubtedly known to the art community but not to the general public, and it likely would have ruined his career if the implications of that had become too widely known.
There's also an element of assumption in that, as Leyendecker, while he never married, and he lived with his primary male model. The assumption is probably correct, but it's just an assumption. None the less, that hasn't stopped a lot of people from claiming to seem outright homosexual undercurrents in his work, which is also probably grossly exaggerated.
Leyendecker was a master at painting male figures in a very rugged, manly and heroic style. There's an art term for it, and I can't recall what it is, but it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks and it basically involves portraying male figures outside of their actual proportions to some degree. The eye won't catch it, unless way over done, but it registers mentally. Leyendecker exhibited that in his art.
And early on, he also often had real trouble depicting women correctly. Leyendecker's female figures up into World War One were often incredibly tiny and didn't have much in the way of figures.
Be that as it may, by this point in time Leyendecker had gotten over that and was definitely portraying female figures correctly, even lushly, so you can't really read much into that. Indeed, one of his most often reprinted illustrations is his deeply weird Easter 1923 illustration for the Saturday Evening Post that probably really does have all sorts of underlying psychological messages, that illustration being a woman who is very sensually kissing a winged baby on the lips who is in a bird cage. I don't know what the heck is going on in that illustration, and I'm really surprised that the Saturday Evening Post printed it, but something is up with it. Leyendecker by that time was taking some liberties with portrays, and those liberties sometimes involved women. It was the Roaring 20s and even the Saturday Evening Post was willing to run those at the time.
Emmett Watson, who painted the feminist message which was missed by almost everyone was a period illustrator who lived until 1955. He never achieved the fame that Norman Rockwell did, though he did have a long career as a commercial and "pulp" illustrator. He wasn't, however, a James Montgomery Flagg, a Rockwell, or a Leyendecker.
Frederic Stanley, whose illustration was close enough to Rockwell at this time that his cover could have been easily mistaken for one, went on to a long career as an illustrator as well. His work, as noted, rivaled Rockwell's at the time. He was self taught. After a bought with meningitis in the 1940s he switched to being a portrait artist. He died in 1967.
Rockwell and Leyendecker we've already discussed. Leyendecker, we'll note, was somewhat of a tragic figure and Rockwell, who greatly admired his work, eclipsed him in fame and frankly, ultimately in talent. He lived for some time with his brother, who died of a drug overdose, and who was also an artist with a very similar style, and his sister. Something in the Leyendecker family had gone wrong somehow in that all three siblings had unusual and tragic lives in varying degrees. Leyendecker remained a significant artist for decades, however, and produced one of the most famous illustrations of George Patton during World War Two.
What's it all mean?
Well, sometimes an illustration is just an illustration. Sometimes it isn't. But considered out of the context of its times, you can't assume too much.
