Sven the Wise and Svea the Kind

Here's another wonderful example of the Tenggren treasures of Kerlan Collection: an original drawing from Sven the Wise and Svea the Kind. I wanted to show it in all it's misery, yellowed and spotted with age; let's call it patina.

Original drawing for Sven the Wise and Svea the Kind.
The Siren of the Woods is being tormented by the Vittra

The book was published in 1932 by Harper and Brothers. It is a compilation of Swedish folk fairy tales rewritten by Alicia O'reardon Overbeck, and contains some of the most outstanding illustrations by Gustaf Tenggren. 

One of the color plates. The Siren of the Woods is luring the young Lapland boy.

 There are two color plates and 14 line b-w drawings. This is Tenggren at his very best, with all the penmanship you see throughout his twenties and thirties. Too bad there's only one single illustration left in the collection, but it's a great one!

A great dame passed away

On Tuesday November 19, Diane Disney Miller sadly passed away at 79 years of age. She was the eldest and sole surviving daughter of Walt Disney. Lately she had been deeply occupied with the creation of The Disney Family Museum in San Fransisco.

Diane Disney Miller, 1933 - 2013

In November 17, 1956, Saturday Evening Post published the first in a series of articles by Diane Disney Miller, My dad Walt Disney. Being a former employee at Disney's studios, Gustaf Tenggren was asked to paint the cover.

Cover for The Saturday Evening Post, November 17 1956

The original painting is said to have been offered  by the Saturday Evening Post as a gift to Walt Disney, but it is not known if he accepted or not. Just recently, though, I heard that Diane Disney Miller had bought the painting for the newly built Family Museum. So it's where it belongs now. Alas, Diane Disney Miller will not be there to see it. As it happens, she passed away only two days later than the day and month of the publishing of this issue.

Gus goes Goose

In 1929 Gustaf Tenggren illustrated a compilation of Mother Goose for Houghton and Mifflin. It was meant to be a school book and contained a number of small educational tasks for the children to solve. The first version had a color front cover which was also used as a frontispiece, but the later editions had only plain B&W print.

Mother Goose book, Houghton and Mifflin 1929

This was the first of Gustaf's book that was paid by royalties, but certainly not the last one. The successful row of Golden Books were also made on a partial royalty basis and rendered a solid economic basis for the later part of his life.
After Gustaf Tenggren had left the Walt Disney Studios in 1939, he made a totally new version of the french classic. From earlier using delicate transparent water color washes, he turned to tempera colors which could be layered heavily and proved to stand over painting without bleeding.

The Tenggren Mother Goose, Little, Brown & Co 1940

The contrast was as clear as day and night and must have been shocking to the fans of Tenggren's old-style illustration style. But when The Tenggren Mother Goose was published in 1940, the critics were enthusiastic: "This is the best Mother Goose ever!", they claimed unanimously.
In Kerlan Collection there is yet another try-out cover design for the book. It is never published but seems to be made in the late1950ies.

Alternate Mother Goose cover, 1950ies.
Published with courtesy of Kerlan collection of
the University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections.

It's probably not made for Simon & Schuster's Golden Books, since Feodor Rojankovski already had made a Mother Goose for them. Possibly it was meant for a re-issue of The Tenggren Mother Goose but never realized.
The three covers with each some ten years between them describe the evolution of Tenggren's style through the years. It was made possible by his ability to adapt to the various designs of the current time, but never losing his draftsmanship which was deeply rooted in art history.

Anna Tenggren

Anna Tenggren, first wife of Gustaf Tenggren. She was born Halmstad, Sweden.
Her brother Rudolf Petersson,  Gustaf's fellow art student and best friend,
was to become a well known cartoonist.
In 1932 he started to draw the still published Swedish comic, 91:an Karlsson. 

Gustaf Tenggren married Anna Petersson in 1918 on her birthday October 3rd. She was the sister of his best friend and fellow art student, Rudolf Peterson. In july 1920 Gustaf and Anna went to USA from Copenhagen on the emigration ship Hellig Olaf. They settled in Cleveland, OH, where Gustaf had already two sisters. The year after, her brother Rudolf accompanied them, starting a career as a cartoonist for the Cleveland paper The Bystander. Gustaf and Anna had lived in Cleveland for some two years when Rudolf met Asta, a Norwegian girl. Her best friend was Mollie Froberg who were to become Gustaf Tenggren's second wife.

Clipping from Cleveland Press, 1930.
The portrait received 2:nd prize in the spring
exhibition at Cleveland Art Museum that year. 

Portrait of Anna Tenggren, painted by Elmer Brubeck in 1930.
Published with kind permission from Bradley Brubeck.

As Gustaf Tenggren moved to New York City along with Mollie and Anna in 1923, the relation to Anna faded and they eventually separated. Anna Tenggren went back to Cleveland and worked for Elroy J. Kulas, the founder of a large steel company.
In 1936 she went back to Sweden and in 1945 she married to Åke Brink with whom she spent the rest of her life. 

Anna with car and dogs in Cleveland, 1930's.

Ghastly, Gustaf!

As Halloween is coming up it might be accurate to look into one of Gustaf Tenggren's late book projects, alas one that didn't come to publication. Gustaf was an idle reader and had a large library. Probably in the early sixties, he compiled a list of 12 ghost stories from famous authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain and Leo Tolstoy. 

Cover sketch 1

The huge amount of thorough sketches show Tenggren's great dedication to this project, but for some reason it was never realized. Had it been published, it would probably have been one of his greatest books. Maybe the publishers got cold feet when they saw the collected horror impact from the sketch material. Here are some of the drawings from the pile of dark and eerie visions that could have been the scariest of all Tenggren books, The Tenggren selection of Weird and Fantastic Tales!

Cover sketch 2

Cover sketch 3

Illustration sketch 1

Illustration sketch 2

Illustration sketch 3

All images by courtesy of Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

Cheers!

During the 1920's and the early 1930's Gustaf Tenggren had a number of illustration commissions for magazines, such as Saturday Evening Post, Good Housekeeping and Redbook. This wonderful watercolor illustration from the Tenggren Papers in the Kerlan Collection is a good example of the type of paintings he made for short novels and advertisements.

Pirates drinking grog.
By courtesy of Kerlan collection of the
University of Minnesota Libraries with permissions
from the Archives and Special Collections.

It's unknown whether it was eventually printed, but Tenggren was sought after for his ability to paint pirates, a theme that he returned to all his life. In 1926 The New York World even called him "The new Howard Pyle", and his Pirate Girl ads for Rogers Bros silverware were a great success in the later half of the 1920's.

Early Tenggren book discovered

Here's some more from my visit at Kerlan Collection, University of Minneapolis, Minnesota. One of the oldest items to be found in the catalog is a sketch for a cover. The title is En sagokrans (A garland of fairy tales). In the catalog it's stated as not confirmed as published.

A sketch for a book cover in the Tenggren papers, Kerlan Collection

I had never heard of it until I found it in this collection. I went to the Royal National Library in Stockholm where all Swedish printed items are sent for archiving. The book was not registered digitally but had a card in the old handwritten catalog. It said: "En sagokrans by Helena Nyblom, Published by Åhlen och Åkerlund 1918". It was the same company that published the fairy tale annual Bland Tomtar och Troll. This year Gustaf Tenggren also illustrated the total volume on his own for the first time. Eight more were to follow.

En sagokrans (A garland of fairy tales) by Helena Nyblom
Åhlen och Åkerlund, 1918

The cover shows a "Huldra", a siren of the woods, and illustrates one of the fairy tales in the book. Although the painting is circularly cropped and the signature is hidden, the Tenggren mark is fully visible. Thanks to the Kerlan catalog this very scarce book could be discovered. Else it would probably have been lost in oblivion.