Hit the road, Jack!

Previously I have shown some examples of how Gustaf Tenggren reused old material. As a master illustrator of fairy tales he was bound to turn back to the classics several times throughout his career. In this case it's interesting to follow his styles as they develop through years, one each decade. The first time he illustrated Jack and the Beanstalk it was included in The Read Fairy Book, compiled by Andrew Lang. After that he made three more versions, all of them great works of art.

Jack and the Beanstalk of the twenties:
The Red Fairy Book,  David McKay, 1924

Jack and the Beanstalk of the thirties:
The New York World Sunday Magazine, 1930
Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

Jack and the Beanstalk of the forties: 
The Tenggren Tell-it-Again Book. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942

Jack and the Beanstalk of the fifties:
Tenggren's Jack and the Beanstalk. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1953

California Watercolors

From his first years as an illustrator, watercolours had been the major painting method for Gustaf Tenggren . All the artists he admired had worked in the same media: Carl Larsson, John Bauer, Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, to mention a few. He was a member of the American Watercolor Society along with many of his colleagues within commercial art, and as they he had learned to master the technique to perfection. The paintings were very accurate and meticulously rendered down to the tiniest detail.

Laguna Beach 1936
Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

But after his arrival in Los Angeles in early spring 1936, he seems to have become aware of an alternate, looser and more vivid watercolor style.
At this time, the art scene was significantly influenced by the painters in The Californian Watercolor Society. Among the members were Mary Blair and her husband Lee Blair. Mary Blair never met with Gustaf Tenggren at work while employed at the Disney Studio; she came to Disney's in April 1940 and Gustaf left in January 1939. But Tenggren exhibited at the Pomona Country Art Fair in fall 1939, where Lee Blair had some paintings, so they're likely to have met and to have known each other.

Gustaf Tenggren painting at Catalina Island 1937

He started to make free-air painting excursions in the neighbourhoods; Hollywood and Wilmington, Laguna Beach and even to Catalina Island. Walt Disney himself bought a Catalina landscape from Tenggren in 1938.

Catalina Landscape 1936

In the same way that the climate made both Gustaf and Mollie Tenggren more happy and relaxed, it helped to vitalize Tenggren’s imagery and added yet a style to his visual toolbox. It might also have helped to loosen up his painting all over; a change of style is clearly visible in his post-Disney works.
A number of Gustaf Tenggren's watercolors are held by the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who have kindly given permission to publish them here.

Hollywood 1936
Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Hollywood 1937

Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum

at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Hollywood 1937
Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Wilmington 1937
Collection of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Wilmington 1937

With a whole lot of help from my friends!

Thanks to the kind and helpful assistance from Bjoern Larsen and Henrik Wilfred Christensen, two of the members of the Danish Jules Verne Society, I can now add a row of ten more Tenggren-illustrated books to my library. Let alone my own excitement, it was invaluable for my Tenggren research to be able to study them more closely.

The ten Jules Verne books illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren in 1919 and
published in 1922 by Jespersen's publishing Company, Copenhagen.
I'm so grateful to the members The Danish Jules Verne Society that
discovered the illustrations and helped me to get the books!

I think that this commission for Jespersen’s publishing company was a great challenge for Gustaf Tenggren when he received it in 1919. To judge from the consistency of style, the row of next to 60 drawings were executed during a concentrated period. It forced Tenggren to be quite efficient and to develop a drawing style that would fit both the printing process and the limited budget. This edition was meant to be an inexpensive one, which implied bulkier inlay paper and a more fragile cardboard binding.
Nevertheless, it’s an impressive piece of work to have been executed by a 23-year old artist, just let out of Valands School of Art, and on the verge to a 50-year career within illustration in USA.

20,000 leagues under the sea, cover painting by Gustaf Tenggren

The Children of Captain Grant, cover painting by Gustaf Tenggren

The advertisement for the book series tells us that Tenggren also made front covers for some of the books. It seems that these are the two first in the row, “20,000 leagues under the sea” and “The children of Captain Grant”, since the rest have covers already used earlier. Maybe it was due to loss of time that he didn’t complete the covers; he was also busy making the illustrations for Grimm’s Fairy Tales” for the same company.
As an example, here come the six illustrations for “The Children of Captain Grant”, probably published on the Internet for the first time. Enjoy!