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Biographical information for the illustrator Edmund Davenport must be someplace, but I can't seem to find it by Googling. Nor can I find it in my personal collection of books about illustration. All I know for sure at this point is that most of the internet images of his work date from 1925-1928. These works include some Saturday Evening Post covers, so Davenport briefly was hitting the big time. Besides the Post, he did covers for other magazines and advertising art for Stutz automobiles and Syracuse China (the latter not shown below). Here are most of the examples of his work that I could find. Gallery Saturday Evening Post cover - 13 June 1925 New graduate literally "on top of the world." Holland's Magazine cover - May 1926 The Elks Magazine cover - February 1926 The Elks are an American fraternal organization. American Magazine cover - November 1928 Stutz advertisement - 1927 This advertisement and the ones below feature simplified backgrounds and contra-jour s

Lionel-Noël Royer (1852-1926), according to his English language Wikipedia entry , is best known for his large paintings of the life of Joan of Arc located in the Basilica of Bois-Chenu in Domrémy, her home town. His French Wikipedia entry also notes that he is known " ainsi que du tableau Vercingétorix jette ses armes aux pieds de Jules César ." The latter ("Vercingétorix Throwing his Weapons at the Feet of Caesar" - 1899) is probably better known outside France because it has been used as book cover art. It's the image at the top of this post (click on it to enlarge). Royer fought in one Franco-Prussian War battle, so was qualified to paint battle scenes even though he followed convention and overly dramatized the action.  Following the war he studied art at l'École des beaux-arts de Paris under Alexandre Cabanel and William Bouguereau. Royer painted simple subjects, but excelled in dealing with complex scenes with casts worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille

Most tours of England's West Country take in the city of Bath, that once was a Roman site and for many is a Jane Austen mecca. But not far down the road to the west is Bristol , which also is worth a visit, though its character is different. Architecturally, and due to its siting, the Bristol building that interests me the most is the Wills Tower on the Wills Memorial Building . It sits on one of Bristol's hills as part of Bristol University , a "red brick" institution that received its royal charter in 1909. The tower's construction was begun in 1915, but completion was delayed until 1925 due to the Great War. Its architect was Sir George Herbert Oatley (1863–1950) who was the university's architect for a number of years. It is a tall (215 foot, 65.5 meter) structure nicely composed using plain and highly decorated areas that play off one another. Gallery The tower as seen looking up Park Street in 1939 where it serves as a focus. Park Street is just off

Pierre-Georges Jeanniot (1848–1934) fought in the Franco-Prussian war, later rising to the rank of Major. When offered promotion to commandant (lieutenant colonel), he resigned to become a full-time artist. From this Wikipedia entry, it isn't clear where he received artistic training, though the French version states it was from his father who for many years was director of l'École des Beaux-Arts of Dijon. The entry also mentions that Jeanniot became friends with some of the French Impressionists, especially Edgar Degas. And in 1906 he became a chevalier (knight) of the Légion d'Honneur, then officier par décret in 1929. Clearly, he was well-regarded in his day, though not widely known today, at least here in the USA. Besides painting, Jeanniot was an engraver and illustrator of books. As can be seen in the images below, he was highly skilled, though his works were not distinctive enough (in my judgement) to be instantly identifiable as done by him. Gallery La Ligne

Albert Beck Wenzell (1864-1917) isn't widely known today, even by illustration buffs such as me. That might be because most of his work was done during what some call the Golden Age of Illustration. My bias is that the gold happened mostly between 1915 and 1960. Judgment calls all around. Still, Wenzell was posthumously inducted into the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame as recently as 2005. Here is the Society's web page about him. Wenzell was very good at his tasks. His style was not the stiff, wooden sort of thing often found during his era. Instead, it edged towards the free and sketchy, though this varied by topic and perhaps the tastes of various magazine art directors he had to deal with. His subject matter seems to have largely been upper-class society folks. Such were the subjects of the fiction pieces he was hired to illustrate. And those subjects remained popular for decades following his death. Today's "sophisticates" -- especially of

Isaac Lazarus Israëls (1865-1934) was a Dutch painter and son of Josef Israëls, an important 19th century artist. His Wikipedia entry is here . He received some training by his father and at an academy, but otherwise was self-taught. From 1905 to 1915 he was in Paris and London, but spent most of his career in the Netherlands. Israëls shed his academic style before he was 30. Thereafter, from what I can tell from images of his works on the internet, his style became quite sketchy, though he did not distort colors or proportions of his subjects. So he was a modernist to only a limited degree. Gallery Transport of Colonial Soldiers - 1883-84 They were probably headed to the Netherlands East Indies.  This was painted a year or two after Israëls left the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Shop Window - 1894 Woman in front of Van Gogh's Sunflowers - 1917-1918 Carmencita Two Hirsch Models, Ippy and Gertie Wehmann - c. 1916 Hirsch was a department store found in several European citie