W. David Shaw: Two Brush Drawings... and A Cover.

Three years to the month after the article we've been looking at this week, American Artist magazine revisited W. David Shaw, this time even giving him the cover.


Inside, Shaw's work and accompanying narrative is featured in a brief 2-page article...

"The drawings reproduced here were made last spring on a short, relaxed sketching trip in the Cotswolds in England and along the Rhine. I traveled by plane from New York to london, rented a small car, and drove directly to the Cotswold hills. A little later I flew from London to cologne, then drove in a rented car down the east bank of the Rhine to Heidelberg, back along the west bank through the wine country to Cologne - and then returned to New York by plane."


"I traveled light - one medium-sized suitcase with the usual clothing plus a leather handbag that held all my sketching materials. Included were three books of 20-sheet Bristol paper, 11 x 14; one sable brush, series 7, #3; a bottle of jet-black ink; a plastic cosmetic jar for water to rinse the brush; a folding stool (canvas and aluminum); a package of facial tissues; and an aluminum sign-painter's mahlstick with a suction cup on one end and a rubber pad on the other (it was in three sections which could be put together easily)."


"When I saw a subject that I wanted to draw I stopped the car, assembled my few materials, sat down, opened the ink and put it on the ground to my right, fitted the mahlstick together, put the suction cup to the back of the drawing pad, took up the brush, and looked long and hard at the subject. Then I started drawing directly with the brush and ink. I put in everything that interested or amused me, ignoring the rest. In every case the result was something that I could not possibly have invented. Working within these limitations (I did not take a camera on this trip) I was at times forced to improvise - to think of some way to make this one tool do the many things I required of it. Since this trip was purely for relaxation - a sort of busman's holiday - I found it successful in every respect. Altogether, I managed to make sixty drawings." - W.D.S.

* My W. David Shaw Flickr set.

W. David Shaw: "I have always believed in myself"

In the article from the October 1955 issue of American Artist, W. David Shaw tells interviewer Ernest W. Watson, "Being born on the 4th of July was really a felicitous circumstance for me. In early childhood I enjoyed the illusion that Indepenence Day bands were celebrating my own birthday; that the orations, parades, and picnics were festivities honoring that personal event."


"It may be hard for you to understand how that childish delusion could affect my later attitude toward life but, seriously, it did; it gave me a confidence in myself which I know has been a big factor in whatever success I have attained."


"I have always believed in myself - and I think that is important for an artist, for every creative person."


Shaw continues, "Many artists make the mistake of trying to anticipate what the client might have in his mind or in trying to copy a style that is currently popular, rather than in asserting and promoting their own original ideas. When, five years ago, I first showed the kind of work I am now doing, it was not readily accepted. I had to be very persistent in it. Now I am kept busy supplying the demand for exactly the sort of thing I can do best and love best to do."


Above, what might have been an early indication that Shaw was on the right track, this piece was recognized by the Art Directors Club of New York for inclusion on nearly the last page of their 1948 annual.

Seven years later, the piece at the top of today's post won 'Best Painting in Show' and 'Best Full Color Magazine Illustration' from the San Francisco Art Directors Club.


The untimely death of his father did not sway the young David Shaw from his determination to pursue a career in art. He had saved enough money to go to Chicago and, with a part-time job in a cafeteria and frugal living, he made it through his first year at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Later he earned money as a letterer and in 1936 he graduated.

Then came work in an engraving shop and marriage at age 21 to Janice Youngblood, his hometown sweetheart. Soon thereafter, Shaw landed a hundred-dollar-a-week job at the Nugent-Graham Studio in Chicago.


When the war came, Shaw took infantry training and was shipped overseas to Italy. He was assigned to Yank magazine as a reporter-illustrator and made hundreds of pictures for the Army Archives, plus many hundreds more that filled his sketchbooks.

It must have been this time - plus his early training in sign painting - that helped Shaw refine what Watson succinctly describes as his "living, expressive line which is noteworthy in his present work where it is incorporated with his dashing brush."


Watson points out that Shaw's post-war freelance career found him specializing in travel subjects - "places and atmosphere" - more often than as an illustrator of fiction.

Even so, Shaw produced the occasional story illustration like the one below, suggesting that he enjoyed the opportunity to experiment outside his niche...


At the time of the article Shaw was living with his wife and four-year-old son, Timothy, in Greenwich, Connecticut.

* My W. David Shaw Flickr set.

* Many thanks to Jaleen Grove for providing the W. David Shaw article from American Artist magazine from which this week's information is derived.

W. David Shaw: "No Talent" - Underscored!

When Ernest W. Watson was preparing to interview W. David Shaw for the October 1955 issue of American Artist, he asked Shaw to jot down a few biographical notes and send them to him. Shaw began his reply with "Born July 4, 1916, Boonville, Indiana - No talent."

The words "no talent", Watson reported, were underlined.


When writing about his early schooling, Shaw again wrote "no talent" - and again further down, when he noted the beginning of his formal art training in Chicago.

"The underlining seems to have been done with a contumacious rigor implying a challenge to anyone who supports the theory of God-given talent," wrote Watson.


Shaw believed that "a person can do anything if he wants to do it earnestly enough and if he will work hard enough for it."


"That is the way I have made my own way, knowning from boyhood days that I wanted to be an artist and consistently struggling to that end."


Shaw praised his parents for fostering his early interest in art.


"Mother played the violin and piano. She also did fancy work. She was not a copyist; she invented her own designs or took fantastic liberties with patterns that served merely as a point of departure."



His father also profoundly influenced the young David Shaw. Though the elder Shaw was a coal miner, he had ambitions for an art career. "He wanted to be a sign painter," says Shaw. "So he took an International Correspondence School course in sign painting and, venturing much, left the mines and hung out his shingle. Well, he did all right, got all the work he could do until the depression of the Thirties. I became his helper."


"In the late Twenties, while still in my early teens, I was earning seven dollars a day and was carrying a union card. Much of this money I banked against the day when I would want it for my art education."

"Those sign painting days really were thrilling. They took dad and me all around the country. We often camped out when far from home."


"And dad's shop itself was exciting; to me it seemed the very center of the town's cultural and business activity. All sorts of people came there to order signs and we seemed to be an important cog in the business life of the community."


Tragedy struck the Shaw family during Dave's sophmore year in high school. Due to the tough times of the depression, Dave's father had no choice but to return to the mines.


A week later, he was killed in a accident.



My W. David Shaw Flickr set.

* Once again, my thanks to Harold Henriksen for today's scans, and to Jaleen Grove for providing the W. David Shaw article from American Artist magazine.

W. David Shaw: "Every sketch... a potential finished picture"

Some very interesting things are revealed about W David Shaw's working methods in Ernest W. Watson's October '55 interview with the artist. For instance, Shaw only worked four days a week. His weekends began on Friday and he never took work home. In fact, the artist told Watson, "I don't do any artwork at home."


Yet Shaw was able to produce a tremendous amount of work for a broad range of both advertising and editorial clients. His pictures appeared in Esquire, Holiday, Collier's, Woman's Day, This Week, Reader's Digest and many others.


Advertising clients included Grace Line, T.W.A., American Express, the Nassau Development Board, Johnson and Murphy Shoe Company, and National Distilleries.


Watson wrote, "the answer [to Shaw's prodigious output] lies particularly in the character of his work and the astonishing facility with which he handles the watercolor brush."


Shaw never did rough sketches of comps - every piece he began was a potential finished piece. If a drawing didn't come off at the first attempt, he'd throw it out and start a new one! If that also failed to please him, he'd begin a third.


In this manner, writes Watson, "[Dave's] work is impressionistic; it is free and impulsive. It is entirely devoid of laborious and time-consuming detail."

"His brush does unpremeditated things as the picture develops."

* My W. David Shaw Flickr set.

* My thanks to Harold Henriksen, for today's scans, and to Jaleen Grove for providing the W. David Shaw article from American Artist magazine.

W. David Shaw: The Epitome of 50's Style

I first noticed the work of W. David Shaw when I stumbled upon a small series of spots he did for an automotive article in the December 1956 issue of Collier's magazine. I wasn't around to experience the 1950's first hand - but for this child of the 70's, Shaw's style somehow really epitomizes that 1950's 'look'.


I know now that that's too broad an observation... but I do sincerely feel that there's something here that deserves closer examination. W. David Shaw's work reminds me of a certain kind of imagery I saw in the background paintings of old cartoons and the ink styles of old comic books, magazines, newspapers and textbooks when I was growing up.

It reflects that space-age, jet-propelled modernism seen in 1950's diner signage and automobile tailfins...

So just who was this W. David Shaw?

Did he originate or somehow perfect this distinctive, iconically 1950's style? He was not included in Walt Reed's Illustrator in America book - and everyone I contacted who might know only vaguely recalled his name or work -- if at all. My research lead to a mention of an article in the October 1955 issue of American Artist magazine.... an issue that proved to be maddeningly elusive... until this past weekend, when my friend, Jaleen Grove, made a special trip to the New York Public Library to shoot the pages for me in their bound volumes collection.

Yay, Jaleen!


Right away we learn that, by the mid-1950's, W. David Shaw was very busy indeed. Author Ernest W. Watson reports that Shaw is so sought-after that he has not had to solicit work in 5 years.


On the morning of Watson's visit to Shaw's downtown New York studio (on the 10th floor of a building on 48th Street, across from the Waldorf-Astoria) Shaw is rapidly executing a small ink drawing.


He explains to Watson that when he gets a small rush job such as the one he is completing, he calls the messenger service, sits down with his drawing board propped against his knees and the edge of a table, and by the time the messenger arrives he is usually done.


Watson describes how Shaw's studio is so spare it verges on barren. A few essential pieces of office furniture, some art materials in "a taboret of his own design", nothing on the walls but a poster and one framed watercolour, and a folding chair "brought out for chance visitors."


If an artist's surroundings reflect his personal style or philosophy (and how could they not?) it sounds like W. David Shaw's studio was a sort of physical manifestation of his drawing style: modern and unencumbered by slavish detail or clutter, focusing only on the essentials.


With only this brief description and these few examples as our introduction, I hope you find the work of W. David Shaw as intriguing as I do. This week, we'll learn a little more about the man and his work.

My W. David Shaw Flickr set.

William A Smith: "...a terrible picture of the atrociousness of war."

Today, the conclusion of an article that originally appeared in Asia and the Americas magazine in July, 1946, written and illustrated by William A. Smith:

"At Hsian, previous to coming to Weihsien, I had gone over to visit and make a sketch of George Barr, one of the Doolittle fliers rescued by our team that had jumped into Peking."



"Kept in solitary confinement for the duration of the war, suffering from beri-beri and having been horribly beaten by brutal Japanese guards, Barr presented a terrible picture of the atrociousness of war. Greenishly pale, staring vacantly at the broken knuckles of his hands, he was unable to recognize or talk to any one. I was so overwhelmed by the sight that I couldn’t draw, but it was so vivid that I could sketch it today from memory."


"This experience emphasized the comparative good fortune of the civilians who were interned at Weihsien. They were subject to hardships and indignities, but they were certainly not victims of torture and brutality."


"The length of the internment perhaps had a greater effect upon the children than upon the adults. Many of the children know of no other way of life."


"One small child, upon reaching the coast and seeing the ocean for the first time, exclaimed, “Oh mommy, what a large cesspool!”


* My sincere thanks to Kim Smith, William A. Smith's daughter, who provided the text from this article, along with all of the scans. Some of this week's images were from William A. Smith's other OSS missions around China during W.W.II.

For those interested in learning more about the Weihsien Prison camp, Kim has provided a number of photographs which I have archived here. As well, Kim located an extensive website about Weihsien that includes "documents, paintings, sketches, texts and memories" of the survivors of the camp.

As a final treat, Kim sent along this drawing done - not by her dad, but rather of him - by another artist who's career we've previously looked at: Gilbert Bundy.

After the war, Bill Smith continued to travel extensively throughout Asia (and Africa) and this drawing was done "on a USO junket to Korea in '51 or '52, when a group of illustrators went to entertain the troops. They wore their own old Army uniforms," writes Kim, "I guess to fit in."

Getting Out of Weihsien: "...we were confronted with a very serious problem."

From an article that originally appeared in Asia and the Americas magazine in July, 1946, written and illustrated by William A. Smith:

"Steiger had promised to secure a projector and some films, but their arrival was maddeningly delayed. When a plane landed at the airstrip the first question asked was, “Did the projector come?” Toward the end of my month’s stay, the movie equipment finally arrived. A joyous holiday atmosphere swept the camp. Threats of not being able to see the movie put children on their best behavior. I attended the first showing, but the picture was so bad that I couldn’t endure more than the first ten minutes of it. I was outside the theater when the internees came out raving about what a superb picture it had been."


"The considerable delay in the evacuation of the camp was due partly to the troubled situation in that area. The Chineses Communists were very active in the vicinity, and kept the puppet general whose troops were holding the town of Weihsien in a state of extreme nervousness. The ten thousand Japanese troops in the vicinity were still armed, and the central government guerilla group was busy with its own operations. These four factions created a great deal of confusion, and there was heavy fighting every night. The Japs were trying to keep the railroad, which ran from Weihsien to Tsingtao, open, but the tracks and bridges were constantly being blown out of commission by explosive. We couldn’t depend on trains getting through to the coast, and since this was the only means of transportation available, we were confronted with a very serious problem."


"In the interest of getting the prisoners out, an agreement to keep the railroad open for twelve days was finally secured from the warring factions. Since Tsingtao lacked accommodations to absorb all fifteen hundred prisoners, it was decided to take approximately a third of them in the first trainload. Hospital cases and people with homes or friends in the Tsingtao are were included in the first group. Bad weather, which made the roads to the railway impassable, caused another delay, but the first group finally reached Tsingtao safely. I went to Tsingtao a few days later and stayed a couple of weeks. On the thirteenth day after the agreement, the railroad had again been blown up in a number of places. At the time I left Tsingtao for Shanghai the remaining internees had not yet been able to get out of Weihsien."



* My thanks to Kim Smith for providing both the art and article for this week's topic. Our story concludes tomorrow.