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PAGE
4
By
Carlton Hendricks
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Antiques
and the Arts Weekly
Leyendecker
cover story Oct. 2nd 2009
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here to r |
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in of Catcher |
Front
page Antiques and the Arts Weekly Oct 2, 2009 |
Close
in of Leyendecker Signature |
LEYENDECKER'S
ARE RARE
Over
the twenty three years I've been collecting, I have only come
across a handful of Leyendecker sports posters...more football than any sport probably. I was
pleased to see my poster's catcher illustration on the cover of
the Oct. 2009 Antiques and Arts Weekly publication. It had been
included as part of a story on Leyendecker
IT'S
UNIQUENESS
As
mentioned, generally any antique sports event poster is rare,
but ones by recognizable teams or schools are more so. And
within the few of them that have survived, probably about half
of them will have some kind of illustration. And about half the
illustrated ones are of decent art quality. However, I don't
recall ever seeing an antique sports event poster illustrated by
a major American illustrator. Much less by one as celebrated as
Leyendecker. So I know it's a very rare poster in terms of art
quality and it's pretty much a stand alone example of a sports
event poster by a big name illustrator. Leyendecker did do a
football poster for the University of Pennsylvania, but it
wasn't an event poster, but one that celebrated football at U.P.,
and is more an art poster. Amazingly I did once have a high
school poster that employed the same image as the U.P. one, but
with a red jersey.
| Possible
stock images by Leyendecker |
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Close
in of Purdue vs Northwestern Leyendecker catcher |
Leyendecker
14" x 22" High School
football
poster |
LEYENDECKER'S
SHREWDNESS
The
two anomalies of the high school and this Purdue vs.
Northwestern seems to imply business acumen on Leyendecker's
part. That is, I speculate Leyendecker moved to extract all he
could monetarily from his work. Perhaps by selling his archived
work from former projects to printing firms as stock images. I
don't know the proprietary mechanics of how that worked for
images that had been commissioned by the likes of the Saturday
Evening Post, as this catcher was. But I do know a high school
used the same basic illustration of the football kicker that was
used for a Saturday Evening Post cover and that a high school
would not typically hire a nationally recognized artist to
illustrate a poster. University of Pennsylvania maybe, high
school no...and I doubt Northwestern would either.
The
J.C. Leyendecker Mansion,
New
Rochelle N.Y.
The
other indicator of Leyendecker squeezing profit from his work
took place later in his life. According to accounts he lived in
a mansion in New Rochelle New York and put on lavish parties. So
based on that we know he was a spender. But it's reported that
late in life he had to let his household staff go and he and his
family attempted to keep up the mansion by themselves.
Which indicates he didn't save for rainy days, which again
implies he was a heavy spender during the good years of his
career and may have needed to sell some of his old
illustrations as stock images to help support an extravagant
life style. If that's how it played out, it was a boon for
poster collectors. Although this is the only example of this
poster I've seen in twenty three years of collecting.
Purdue
vs. Northwestern baseball poster in action
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