This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, John Falter became a nationally known magazine illustrator, painter of celebrity portraits and scenes of western migration.
In 1916, his family moved to Falls City, Nebraska where his father ran a clothing store. Falter created a comic strip, "Down Thru the Ages," which ran in the "Fall City Journal." J.M. Darling, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist of the "Des Moines Register," saw some of his work and urged him to become a professional illustrator.
In 1928, he enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute and then won a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York City. Soon, he began illustrating pulp magazines and received his first commission from "Liberty" magazine to do three illustrations a week in 1933. By 1940, he had several clients including Gulf Oil, 4 Roses Whiskey, Arrow Shirts, and Pall Mall.
His first "Saturday Evening Post Cover," a portrait of the magazine's founder Benjamin Franklin, is dated September 1, 1943, and from that time until 1969, he did 185 covers until the magazine ceased publication.
In 1943, he enlisted in the Navy and designed over 300 recruiting posters and during this time completed a series of twelve famous war heroes for "Esquire" magazine. He also did illustrations for "Good Housekeeping," "The Home Magazine," "The Ladies Home Journal," "Cosmopolitan," "McCalls," "Life," and "Look."
His body of work is impressive in volume and variety of subject matter, and much of it reflected his life-long interest in jazz. He did scenes of Harlem nightclub life in the 1930s and portraits of famous jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, and Pee Wee Erwin. He also did portraits of movie stars including Clark Gable, James Cagney, and Olivia de Haviland.
During the 1970s and 1980s, he turned to historical and western themes including a series "From Sea to Shining Sea" for 3M Company to commemorate the American Bicentennial. He completed over 200 paintings of western subjects, emphasizing westward migration of 1843 to 1880 from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains.
In 1976, he was elected to the Illustrators Hall of Fame and in 1978 to the National Academy of Western Art with whom he exhibited at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
Source:
Walt Reed, "The Illustrator in America"
Archives, Museum of Nebraska Art |
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born Plattsmouth, NB, Feb. 28, 1910; died Philadelphia, May 1982. Illustrator. Painter, specialized in scenes from his childhood in Kansas and Nebraska, portraits, American history. Raised in Falls City, NB and at the family’s homestead in Atchison. Studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, the Art Students League, the Grand Central School of Art in NY. Teachers included Mahonri Young, George Wright, & Monte Crews. Began as an illustrator of western pulp magazines. Work includes more than 200 covers for Saturday Evening Post, many based on his childhood. Credited with designing over 300 recruiting posters for the Navy during World War II. Illustrated over 40 books for Reader’s Digest. | Source:
AWARDS:
Illustrators Hall of Fame, 1976; National Academy of Western Art, 1978.
COLLECTIONS:
Painted a series of Bicentennial scenes for the 3M company in 1976; Spencer Museum of Art.
MEMBERSHIPS:
Society of Illustrators; the Players; the Philadelphia Sketch Club.
SOURCES:
Susan Craig, "Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945)"
Sain, Lydia. Kansas Artists, compiled by Lydia Sain from 1932 to 1948. Typed Manuscript, 1948.; Who’s Who in American Art. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1936- v.1=1936-37 v.3= 1941-42 v.2=1938-39 v.4=1940-47. 4, 6, 7; Belden, Dorothy. “Kansas Artists Known in World”, in Wichita Eagle Beacon, Jan. 29, 1978. p. 12K; Samuels, Peggy. Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1976.; Reed, Walt. The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000. New York: Society of Illustrators, 2001., Walt. The Illustrator in America, 1860-2000. New York: Society of Illustrators, 2001.; AskArt, www.askart.com, accessed Sept. 2, 2005; | | This and over 1,750 other biographies can be found in Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (active before 1945) compiled by Susan V. Craig, Art & Architecture Librarian at University of Kansas. |
Biography from American Illustrators Gallery:
|  John Phillip Falter was born in Plattsmouth, Nebraska although the family homestead was in Atchison, Kansas. He started his illustration career rather young, selling his first artwork at twenty years old to Liberty, a pulp magazine. The Liberty magazine commission gave him the exposure he needed to gain other bluechip clients, including: Gulf Oil Company, Four Roses Whiskey, and Arrow Shirts.
His career flourished rising from pulp magazines until he was one of the most noted cover illustrators for the most notable magazine in the nation, the Saturday Evening Post.
John Falter studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute and later moved to New York to “get the right exposure and make career contacts,” and he matriculated at the Art Students League. He later attended classes at the Grand Central School of Art and studied under George Wright (1873-1951), an illustrator for The Century, Harper’s, Scribner’s, and the Saturday Evening Post.
Wright was a fine role model for before becoming an illustrator. He was a reporter and was strict in teaching students to make studies and to organize well in advance of starting their illustrative works. Wright also believed in showing clients all the possible ideas to get a better grasp of what the client expected. Likewise, Falter took the lessons well and did the same.
He is reputed to have shown Ken Stuart, Art Editor for the Post, a series of sketch ideas for a cover, with Stuart remarking, “If the idea is right, it takes only a few simple lines for one artist to explain it to another.” Falter went on to illustrate forty-seven books for Reader’s Digest and one hundred and eighty-seven covers for the Saturday Evening Post.
Interestingly and prophetically his businessman father, George H. Falter, once said “You won’t be an artist son, until you’ve put a cover on the Saturday Evening Post.” Over his many years with the Post, John Falter painted mostly scenes he experienced as a youth growing up in Nebraska and Kansas. He also was a portrait artist and had the opportunity to paint jazz idols such as Louis Armstrong and Art Tatum.
He delighted in adding images of real people into his compositions, sometimes including himself. It seemed to arouse some furor on occasion and it also aroused interest similar to that of the cartoonist Al Hirschfeld’s lettering of his daughter’s name, ‘Nina’ hidden away on a caricature. The viewers searched for Falter’s image, usually with a pipe, standing in a crowd waiting to be found out.
In his later years, he painted portraits of a number of famous people. Although not for magazines, the portraits included actress Olivia De Havilland, actor James Cagney, and Admiral Halsey. In World War II, Falter joined the Navy as a chief boatswain’s mate, and when it was learned that his art work had been published, he was commissioned as “lieutenant with special art duties”.
During his seventy-two years, Falter’s paintings depicted a wide range of themes from episodes of American history such as ‘Charging San Juan Hill’ to ‘Country Boy and Collie’, which was reminiscent of his childhood. He illustrated special locales across America from the ‘Golden Gate Bridge’ to ‘Gramercy Park’.
He once said, "If you are not in love with what you are trying to put on canvas, you had better quit." One theme which was prominent throughout all of his works was his deep love for America.
©2004 National Museum of American Illustration |
Biography from The Navy Museum-US Navy Art Collection:
| John Philip Falter (1910-1982) and the WAVES
One of the most prolific and well-recognized artists to contribute to
the Navy’s recruitment campaign, especially the recruitment of Women
Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), John Philip Falter
created over 300 designs for Naval recruitment posters during the
Second World War (1941-1945).
Falter developed his artistic skills at an early age, even designing a
mural for his local soda shop when still a teenager. He expanded his
talents at the Kansas City Art Institute and then the Art Students
League of New York and the Grand Central School of Art where he was
exposed to the techniques of some the most prestigious illustrators of
the Golden Age of Illustration (1880s -1920s).
Starting with minor magazines and local advertisements, Falter's work
eventually caught the eye of major publications. He accepted
commissions from Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, The Ladies
Home Journal, Liberty, Look, and The Reader's Digest. This particular
type of persuasive and dramatic illustration, largely geared towards
female readers, prepared him well to create designs for WAVES
campaigns. By 1942, Falter was part of the pool of preferred propaganda
artists used by the United Stated Office of Facts and Figures (OFF),
later called the Office of War Information (OWI). In 1943, Falter
enlisted in the Navy Reserves, where he continued to make designs for
the Navy's recruitment campaigns as a Lieutenant on special art
assignment.
The Navy began with a group of approximately 100 artists that grew to
nearly 400 artists by February 1944. OFF did not accept unsolicited
designs. Rather, the agency sent letters inviting widely respected
artists to participate. Sketches were critiqued by the Recruiting
Division, Officer Procurement Division and the Women's Reserve Office.
Once a design was agreed upon, the artist painted it. The design might
receive further suggestions for alterations, in which case, the artist
revised or remade the painting before final approval.
Throughout the nation, recruiting posters were placed in countless
prominent public locations. One might see Falter's designs several
times throughout the day during 1943. The Navy often reused the same
designs for multiple formats with differing text. Posters hung in post
offices, libraries, grocery and department stores, on billboards and
even in public restrooms. Car cards, or smaller rectangular posters,
were mounted in subway cars by transit authorities in major
metropolitan areas. Window cards were displayed in the storefronts of
businesses.
The Navy was looking for educated, capable, virtuous, and feminine
women. Accordingly, Falter's WAVES are simultaneously glamorous and
serious. They possess a conventional feminine appearance, wearing
blush, lipstick and nail polish. Yet Falter depicted them doing
important, manicure-marring work: rigging parachutes and operating
radios. In truth, WAVES also did much more labor-intensive work as
well, such as machine assembly, repair work and kitchen patrol, but
artists did not depict those jobs in recruitment posters. Obviously,
many WAVES did not resemble the young, caucasian,
perfectly-proportioned poster gals. The tactics employed by the Navy’s
recruiting bureau in the posters mirrored those of national
advertisements and mass media at the time. It was no coincidence that
Falter, the successful illustrator of popular magazines would become
the Navy's preferred recruitment artist.
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
John Falter is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
Illustrators
|
|
|
|