A VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE profile of the American painter Robert Henri (1865 – 1929):
Robert Henri does not sympathize with the artists who throw their work in the face of the public with a ‘There, take it or leave it.’ Indeed, he has an almost hieratic belief in the power of the fine arts, not merely to delight, but to improve, to uplift and to educate the masses.
Click here to read further about the 1913 Armory show.
American novelist Irwin Shaw (1913 – 1984) was quick to reminisce about the bad old days of World War II and Robert Capa (1913 – 1954), who fit it like a round peg fits a round hole:
Capa is a dangerous influence because he has perfected the trick of making life among the bombed cities and the stinking battlefields of our time seem gay and dashing and glamorous…
Click here to read an anecdote about Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War.
Attached is a brief review of Civilization, the silent anti-war film produced by Thomas Ince in 1917. Sadly, Ince underestimated the power of film as a means of persuasion; World War I raged on for another year and a half following it’s release.
Here is a petite notice that appeared in a 1915 issue of VANITY FAIR heralding a new portrait by the British painter William Orpen (1878 – 1931), which depicted the likeness of a popular American stage actress Mrs. Oscar Lewisohn (Edna May Pettie 1878 – 1948). The anonymous reviewer compared the portrait styles of Orpen with that of London’s reigning portrait painter, John Singer Sargent:
Sargent had a way of showing his sitters as they didn’t think they looked. On the other hand, Orpen has a trick of making his sitters look like what they would like to be.
This cartoon was drawn by the artist Reginald Marsh (1898 – 1954), who had a swell time comparing and contrasting the bio-diversity along 1922 Fifth Avenue; from the free-verse poets on Eighth Avenue up to the narrow-nosed society swanks on Sixty-Eighth Street -and everyone else in between.
Assorted photographs of the assembled German, Spanish, Belgian, Russian, Norwegian and British royal families, posed as they gathered to attend the the 1894 and 1896 Royal weddings at Coburg; also pictured is the group photo snapped at the 1898 shooting party at Sandingham. Queen Victoria appears in two of the pictures, while Kaiser Wilhelm II can be seen in all of them.
For all too few it is understood that fashion need not end in the wilderness: for it is more than likely that that was where the need for fashion was first recognized and it was there, among the toads and the dung, that the Well-Dressed man first crawled out of the muck and civilization
Yachting is one of the things that begin at the bottom. That is to say, at the shoes. They are the foundation, as it were, for the rest of life on the rolling deep.
Art Young (1866 – 1943) was a cartoonist best remembered for his contributions to the radical magazine The Masses, however the hypocritical behavior that was widely inspired by that Noble Experiment, known as Prohibition, no doubt served as the muse for additional cartoons in other rags.
The haberdashers of the Franklin Simon Company of Fifth Avenue, New York City, simply must not have been reading the many news reports regarding the horrors of industrial warfare. Indeed, their concept of coping with such carnage involved offering such sale items as silk handkerchiefs, cashmere socks and a dashing bathrobe for tooling around the barracks.
Click here to see what Brooks Brothers was selling During World War One.
For it’s October issue, the editors of VANITY FAIR magazine stepped up to the plate and did their bit with this splendid review of all the finest uniform apparel that New York City offered it’s silk stocking officers. The article is nicely illustrated with photographs of a double-breasted mackinaw coat, two officer blouses (one of a wool-silk blend), a classic silk knit service tie as well as a very fine trench boot.
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How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience
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What did the smart, re-constructed Confederate soldier wear to the reunions, you ask? Why an eight buttoned sack coat with matching trousers composed of Dixie Gray wool, of course! It was all the rage among the apple-sauce crowd of 1922 – and by clicking the link below you will see a black and white ad from Confederate Veteran Magazine which pictured the togs.
A few words, accompanied by a photograph, concerning the ‘traveler’s covered caddy bag‘ — another attempt at thwarting the efforts of ‘the golf thief’ as well as just plain lousy whether.
A one page article regarding Swiss-born painter Paul Thevenaz
Read a 1937 article about another gay artist: Paul Cadmus.
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In answer to the cry for more affordable cars that can easily be purchased by working families, the French automobile industry of 1912 produced a line of long, narrow, boat-like cars, mounted on four wire wheels, carrying it’s passengers in tandem fashion. The production of these one and two cylinder air-cooled motors was based more upon the production lines of motorcycles rather than cars.
A fine look for the golfing man, not likely to be seen on the green any time soon: a two piece, tweed golf suit with leather buttons, tweed cap, knit tie and wool knee socks.
Egged on by the 1929 completion of the Chrysler building, the curious souls who ran the New York offices of THE LITERARY DIGEST were moved to learn more about skyscrapers, both in New York as well as other parts of the U.S. and We were surprised to learn that as of 1929
50 percent of the buildings in New York from 10 to 20 stories and 60 percent of those over 20 stories are located between 14th and 59th streets.
This article also presents statistical data concerning the number of tall buildings that could be found throughout the 1920s United States.
