Paintings by Joseph Christian Leyendecker

Born in  March of 1874 in Montabaur, a collective-municipality of the German Empire, Joseph Christiana Leyendecker was a German-American illustrator, best known for his book and advertising illustrations. In 1862, the family immigrated to Chicago, Illinois, where Leyendecker’s uncle, Adam Ortseifen, was vice-president of the McAvoy Brewing Company, one of Chicago’s largest breweries before Prohibition. At the age of sixteen, J. C. Leyendecker joined the engraving house of J. Manz & Company as an apprentice.  

Leyendecker later advanced to the level of full-time staff artist at Manz & Company and completed his first commercial commission there, sixty Bible illustrations for an edition published by Manz. He enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute,  where he began formal training in drawing and anatomy under the Dutch-American artist John Vanderpoel.  The first in-print acknowledgement of Leyendecker’s artwork was in the April-September 1895 issue of the “Inland Printer” which described his work for Manz and featured a sketch and two book cover illustrations done for publisher E. A. Weeks. 

In 1896, J. C, Leyendecker and his younger brother Francis Xavier, also an illustrator, traveled to Paris where they both enrolled at the Académie Julian under the tutelage of painters Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Paul Laurens, and the etcher and painter Benjamin Constant, who was best known for his portraits and Oriental subjects. While studying the Neo-classical painting style of the academy, both brothers also became familiar with the popular style of illustrated advertisements executed by such artists as Jules Cherêt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Alphonso Mucha, a prominent member of the French Art Nouveau movement. 

Upon return to the United States in 1897, the Leyendecker brothers settled in Chicago’s Hyde Park area and opened a studio in the Fine Arts Building on South Michigan Street. Joseph Leyendecker received his first commission for a Saturday Evening Post cover on May 20th of 1897, which began a forty-four year association with the magazine. During his career, he created three-hundred twenty-two cover paintings for the Saturday Evening Post; he also did work for Collier’s magazine where he produced forty-eight cover illustrations.

In 1900, the brothers moved to New York City, which had established itself as the commercial advertising capital of the nation, and set up shop in the Bryant Park Studios. It was here in New York City that the two brothers would each establish a successful career as an illustrator. In 1903 at the age of twenty-nine, J. C. Leyendecker met Charles Beach, a young man from Ontario, Canada, who was looking for work as a model. Beach became the main inspiration for the Arrow Collar Man, a model for Leyendecker’s other commissions, and, later, his business manager. He was also Leyendecker’s life partner for the majority of their lives. 

J. C. Leyendecker helped define the modern magazine cover as a unique art form. Conveying a wide range of human emotions, his paintings were done in his hallmark style of crisp, wide and controlled brushstrokes accented by bold highlights. Leyendecker’s greatest fame, however, came from his menswear commissions. In 1905, he convinced the advertising director of Cluett, Peabody & Company, a clothing manufacturer, to utilize a single male image to represent all of their products. The result was not only the first major branding initiative in advertising but also the first real advertising campaign ever launched. The campaign of Leyendecker’s handsome, stylishly dressed man, the Arrow Collars and Shirts Man, was so successful that the Cluett company’s market share grew to ninety-six per cent. 

This Arrow Collars and Shirts Man resonated with the public and became the established image of the ideal, fashionable American male, an icon that helped mold the idea of a glamorous lifestyle and the Roaring Twenties. Leyendecker followed this success with illustrations of chiseled-faced men wearing suits from The House of Kuppenheimer, socks from the Interwoven Stocking Company, and underwear from the Cooper Underwear company. Starting in 1912, Leyendecker began a successful series of twenty commissioned advertisements for the cereal company Kellogg’s, which featured  children and adolescents enjoying bowls of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. 

Both having achieved success in New York City, the two Leyendecker brothers decided to relocate in 1914 to New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City. A number of illustrators and other artists had already relocated to this community, including Norman Rockwell, Frederic Remington, and Orson Lowell. The Leyendeckers built a fourteen room mansion with two studio workspaces; upon the residence’s completion, they were joined by their sister, Mary Augusta, and Charles Beach. This estate, which became the site of numerous large galas hosted by Leyendecker and Beach, would be the residence for their final years together. 

During the First World War, J. C. Leyendecker created posters in support of the nation’s war effort; these were used to urge young men to enlist, promote the purchase of war bonds, and urge the general public to conserve resources necessary for the military. After years of tension in the New Rochelle residence, both Frank and Mary Augusta Leyendecker moved out in 1923; Frank Leyendecker died of an overdose in the following year. 

Although affected greatly by his brother’s death, Leyendecker’s commercial success continued to increase throughout the 1920s. However, by the end of the 1930s, the demand for Leyendecker’s  style of imagery had waned; the use of illustration in advertisements had begun to be overshadowed by the growing use of photographic imagery. By 1945, editorial changes at the Saturday Evening Post caused the end of Leyendecker’s long relationship with the magazine. Leyendecker found his finances failing; he was able to keep himself solvent through calendar commissions and covers for William Randolph Hearst’s magazine, The American Weekly. 

J. C. Leyendecker outlived many of his friends. He died of an acute coronary occlusion, at the age of seventy-seven, on July 25th of 1951 at his New Rochelle estate. Only five individuals attended his funeral; Norman Rockwell and three of Leyendecker’s favorite male models acted as pallbearers. Leyendecker is buried, alongside his parents and brother Frank, at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City. What was left of his estate, including a number of original canvases, was divided between Charles Beach, his forty-nine year partner, and his sister Mary Augusta. 

Charles Allwood Beach died of a heart attack on June 21st of 1954 at New Rochelle. The register for St. Paul’s Church, New Rochelle, indicates interment at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York. Beach is noted as being interned in January of 1975 at the Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Niche L-0001; however, this section is not open to the public