A Christmas legend of Hamelin Town

Here's a typical Tenggren illustration commission from his great period in the 1920ies. The story was published for the Christmas number of Good Housekeeping in 1928, but the actual work was done and delivered July 15. A month later, August 16, it was paid with $600, a not uncommon sum in Gustaf's ledger from the time.
The two illustrations were probably made in full color but the magazine has chosen to print them in a reduced color scale. The painting is cut in half to fit the spread.
Luckily, I found the original painting while browsing through the Miscellaneous illustration crates in the Tenggren papers, Kerlan Collection at University of Minneapolis, MA.

Opening spread for A Christmas legend of Hamelin Town, Good Housekeeping 1928.

Original painting for A Christmas legend of Hamelin Town.
Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

The other illustration for this story shows an old lady and a crowd of children. Let alone Tenggren's excellence in painting cute kids, this painting is interesting in another way. The model for the kneeling old lady is Tenggren's own mother, Augusta. 

Full page illustration in three colors for
A Christmas legend of Hamelin Town, Good Housekeeping 1928.

Tenggren often used his relatives as models for his paintings, and he loved his mother very much as I think can be seen from the beautiful portrait from 1932 below.

Gustaf Tenggren: Portrait in chalk of Augusta, mother of the artist, 1932.

Back to the Classics

In 1959 Golden Press published The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends. It was a compilation of antique tales retold by Anne Terry White and illustrated by Martin and Alice Provensen. But several finds in the collections of University of Minneapolis, Minnesota, proves that Gustaf Tenggren was considered as an alternative artist for the book. A number of fully executed paintings depicting ancient gods of the greeks shows that Tenggren spent a whole lot of work in the belief that he would get the commission for this Giant Golden Book. 

Anne Terry White:
The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends, 1959
Illustrated by Martin and Alice Provensen

Cover draft for
Tenggren's Golden Treasure of Myths and Legends
Kerlan collection of the
University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

Artemis
Kerlan collection of the
University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

Prometheus
Kerlan collection of the
University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

Pandora's box
Kerlan collection of the
University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections

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

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

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

It is not known whether the Golden Press editors felt that Tenggren had more than enough of jobs for the publisher or if Tenggren just didn't have time to complete another Giant Golden Book. Around this time he would have been very busy completing the illustrations for one of his most beautiful books, Golden stories from Arabian Nights. The Provensens were earlier commissioned to do another classic,  The Iliad and the Odyssey, while Tenggren were to concentrate on two Anglo-Saxon classics: Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as well as King Arthur and the Knights Around the Round Table.

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

Elegant as ever

This image was published in November 29, 1956. The famous Saturday Evening Post Cover with Walt Disney had been published just a couple of weeks ago and the local Maine paper The Boothbay Register was making a visit by the artist. At the time his main scope was to meet the deadline for the 100 full color illustrations for Arabian Nights, that were to be delivered in December.

Gustaf Tenggren had just recently celebrated his 60 year birthday in November 3, 1956, when this picture was published.
He doesn't look too overwhelmed, being disturbed in his work.

This 60 year old gentleman is painting along in a nice suit and and tie. On the drawing board is one of the stunning pages illustrating a ferocious fight at sea. It all turned out to be one of his most beautiful books ever. Below is the remarkable original, kept in the vaults of Kerlan Collection in University of Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

Full page from Sindbad the Sailor, Margaret Seifer's compilation of Golden Tales from Arabian Nights
published by Simon & Schuster in 1957.
Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections.

Tenggren goes comics

Here's another finding  from the vault of Kerlan Collections in Minneapolis: a comic strip by Gustaf Tenggren! It covers some thirty pages and I have a vague memory from seeing this in some old clipping from The New York World Magazine. Any information on the origin of this comic story is welcome!

Page 12 from an unidentified comic story by Gustaf Tenggren.
Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections.

It's not a proposal or a dummy, since every page is thoroughly sketched and cleaned up in ink, although the text is left out for the paper to fill in. The cartoon is a fairy tale kind of story about a selfish king. It's probably made in the late twenties, when Tenggren had some other commissions for The New York World Sunday Magazine. It resembles the style in Mother Goose Book from 1928 or Seldom and the Golden Cheese form 1933. Just imagine what stories there might be, had he made more of these. 

A not so Merry Christmas at all

As is the case in many of Hans Christian Andersen's so called fairy tales, The Little Match Girl is a tragic story, not at all suitable for small children. The poor girl is forced by her parents to sell matches in the street a freezing Christmas Eve. Nobody buys from her but she doesn't dare top go home. To keep warm she lights one after of the matches and sees the loveliest sights, hallucinating from cold, until she freezes to death in a corner, while people are hasting by on their way home to their families. Now there's a nice goodnight tale for your toddler!

Little Match Girl, Grosset and Dunlap 1944

Anyway, in 1944 Gustaf Tenggren illustrated this story for Grosset and Dunlap. When I first saw this book, I was not surprised that the end was changed: the little girl doesn't die at all, she gets rescued and wakes up in a warm bed in a rich house where she could stay. Of course, that's natural; a commecial book company simply can't give children the brutal facts of cruel poverty.

The little match girl gets rescued and wakes up in a warm bed
with a caring old lady that wants her as her grandchild.

The very last image of the book where The Little Match Girl is lying
on a cushion, but still in her raggedy beggar's clothes. The painting is ambiguous;
is she really sleeping or is she in fact dead after all?

But I hadn't expected Gustaf Tenggren to produce such a lame ending, since he was a stern and realistic artist and with a deep respect towards the literature classics. I always suspected that Tenggren was unwillingly forced to change the ending; at least I hoped so.
That's why I was quite pleased when I browsed through the dummy for Little Match Girl in The Kerlan Collection - there it was, the real end illustration. Gustaf had meant to illustrate the actual story as it was, in all its sadness. But naturally, the drawing had been rejected. So here they are, both of the endings. You choose.

Gustaf's suggestion from the book dummy for the last image.
This is a dead Little Match Girl, no doubt about it; Gustaf has even written so in the text above.
The last picture in the actual book bears a certain similarity to this one.
Kerlan collection of the University of Minnesota Libraries
with permissions from the Archives and Special Collections.

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!

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.

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.

Saturday Evening Post cover

Some weeks ago I spent four days with the Tenggren holdings at the Kerlan Collection by the University of Minnesota, MN. I was there to do research for my Tenggren biography, which is planned to be released autumn 2014. I had the opportunity to browse through a number of interesting items of Tenggren’s, among these this little folder from the Saturday Evening Post from September 1956, presumably an in-house staff publication. Also in November 1956, the famous Tenggren cover for Saturday Evening Post with Walt Disney on the train was published, illustrating Diane Disney Miller’s article “My dad Walt Disney”. The folder describes the process of the cover from idea to finished painting.

It’s great to see Ken Stuart’s sketches for the various cover ideas, compared with Tenggren’s final well-known artwork. Especially the little addition of Jiminy Cricket is fun to learn about.

The finished cover

Alternate Thumbelina

Here's some more findings from the Kerlan Collection.
 Tenggren's Thumbelina was published by Simon and Schuster in 1953 as the first in a series of Tenggren fairy tales. It features marvelous paintings in the jazzy, decorative style that Tenggren used through the fifties. For those of you already familiar with this Little Golden Book it might be fun to see this alternate cover.

Tenggren's Thumbelina

Little Golden Books, 
Simon and Schuster 1953.
Copyright Random Books

Alternate cover for Tenggren's Thumbelina

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

In this first cover proposal we see a girl on top of the swallow but the style is quite different from the final cover. This year Tenggren produced another Little Golden Book, The Topsy Turvy Circus and it looks as if he fetched this girl from that French-inspired story. There is also a great influence from Mary Blair in the rendering. Mary Blair was one of Tenggren's colleagues at the Character Model Department at Disney's Studio and made a great row of Little Golden Books for Simon and Schuster.
Other books in the Tenggren Fairy Tale series were Jack and the Beanstalk in 1953, The Golden Goose in 1954, The giant with the Three Golden Hairs in 1955, and Snow White and Rose Red in 1957. More books in this series was planned: The Goose Girl and The Magic Snuffbox were two of those who never reached the book shelves but remain as sketch dummies in the Kerlan Collection.

Book project starts up i Minneapolis

Lars Emanuelsson and Oskar Ekman, writers of the Gustaf Tenggren biography

Now it's official: the biography on Gustaf Tenggren is scheduled to be published in August 2014. Co-writer/editor will be Oskar Ekman. The first edition will be in Swedish, but hopefully an English edition will follow within shortly. The publisher is Kartago, a company within the Bonnier Group.
The other week we spent four days at the Elmer L Anderson Library at University of Minneapolis, MN. The University has an enormous archive where a whole lot of documents from all over USA is deposited.
The Tenggren Papers are held within The Kerlan Collection, a collection of children's literature related items, such as books, art, letters and manuscript. It's all part of the Children's Literature Research Center, a world-renowned treasure chamber for knowledge on children's literature.

Curator Lisa von Drasek and me holding an original
Poky Little Puppy illustration. In the background is the
founder of the Kerlan Collection, Dr. Irvin Kerlan.

We were very well received by the curator, Lisa von Drasek, who took us on a tour around the gigantic archive premises. During the four days we browsed through 40 - 50 boxes of Tenggren art and photographed hundreds of documents. I selected 67 pieces of art to be scanned, so the book will feature first class reproductions of many of the great LGB illustrations.
The tour from Sweden to USA was well worth the effort: the holdings of the archive is vast. Almost the total production of original artwork produced by Gustaf Tenggren after WWII were donated by Gustaf's widow, Mollie Tenggren when she died in 1984. Along with that a whole lot of other documents can be browsed, like unpublished proposals, sketches, brochures, clippings and such.
Keep an eye on this blog and I'll try to show some of the fantastic stuff we found in this great treasure chest of Tenggreniana.
My previous Gustaf Tenggren News blog will be discontinued and this one will hold the news from now on.