John R. Neill

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John R. Neill
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
DiedSeptember 13, 1943(1943-09-13) (aged 65)
Known forIllustration
Notable workLand of Oz

John Rea Neill (November 12, 1877 – September 19, 1943) was a

pen-and-ink
drawings have become identified almost exclusively with the Oz series. He did a great deal of magazine and newspaper illustration work which is not as well known today.

Early life

Born in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, John R. Neill did his first illustration work for the Philadelphia's Central High School newspaper in 1894–95. Neill dropped out of Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after one semester because he said, "they have nothing to teach me".[2]

He then turned to advertising art for the

W. W. Denslow
, with whom Baum argued and lost contact afterward.

John R. Neill's artwork for the cover of The Royal Book of Oz (1921)

Career

Originally, Neill's illustrations were slightly reminiscent of Denslow's to bring continuity and familiarity to the characters, although Neill's work in this period was far more reminiscent of the work of his contemporary and friend, illustrator Joseph Clement Coll. Denslow's illustrations had been quite popular. However, as the series expanded, Neill brought his own unique flair to the illustrations, showing more artistic representations of the characters as well as beautiful paintings of numerous scenes. In fact, he was later named the Imperial Illustrator of Oz.

Neill's illustrations were published in the leading magazines of the first few decades of the twentieth century, including

St. Nicholas, The People's Home Journal, Adventure [3] and many others. In 1930 and 1931, he contributed a great deal of artwork to Argosy
.

Dorothy

John R. Neill's depiction of Dorothy in The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

Dorothy drawn by Denslow appeared to be a chubby five- or six-year-old with long brown hair in two thick braids that remained untied at the ends. Neill chose to illustrate a new Dorothy in 1907 when the character was reintroduced in Ozma of Oz. He illustrated the young girl in a more fashionable appearance. She is shown to be about ten years old, dressed in contemporary American fashions, with blonde hair cut in a fashionable bob. A similar modernization was given other female characters.

Oz work

Neill continued to illustrate the Oz books after Baum's death, and his artwork was praised for helping give Ruth Plumly Thompson's books "legitimacy" in the eyes of Baum's fans. Neill would eventually succeed Thompson as the designated "Oz historian" and write several books himself.

Famous Forty. His last work, The Runaway in Oz, was drafted before his death, but the full illustrations were never finished and Reilly & Lee decided not to publish the manuscript. However, Neill's widow kept the manuscript safe, and, in 1995, it was finally published by Books of Wonder and edited and illustrated by Eric Shanower. The book's design reproduces the design used throughout almost all of the Baum, Thompson, and Neill Oz books (without the color plates), and the story itself follows the adventures of the Patchwork Girl
with some new characters invented by Neill.

Dorothy and Ozma by John. R. Neill (1908)

Non-Oz work

Neill illustrated dozens of books that were not written by Baum.

Little Black Sambo. Neill's edition of Little Black Sambo, which was published by Reilly and Britton in 1908, included a short story called "The Story of Topsy from Uncle Tom's Cabin."[5][6]

Legacy

In 2018, "The Lost Art of Oz" project was initiated to locate and catalogue the surviving original artwork John R. Neill,

W.W. Denslow, Frank Kramer, Richard 'Dirk' Gringhuis and Dick Martin created to illustrate the Oz book series.[7]

References

  1. ^ "John R. Neill". HarperCollins Publishers. Archived from the original on 24 May 2013. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  2. ^ "John R Neill Gallery". johnrneill.net. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
  3. ^ Robinson, Frank M. & Davidson, Lawrence. Pulp Culture - The Art of Fiction Magazines. Collectors Press Inc 2007 (p.33-48).
  4. ^ http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/author042.htm>http://www.halcyon.com/piglet/author042.htm[permanent dead link]
  5. ^ Robin Bernstein, Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 66-67.
  6. ^ "The Story of Topsy". virginia.edu. Retrieved 20 January 2017.
  7. ^ "About".

External links

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