by Duane Spurlock
Harvey Dunn isn’t usually on the list of famed pulp-cover artists -- his work more often appeared in the slicks. He had a long association with the Saturday Evening Post as its cover artist, and executed many interior illustrations for that magazine and others -- including covers -- such as Collier’s, Scribner’s, Harper’s, Century, Outing, Cosmopolitan, American Magazine, and McCall’s, among others.
Yet, I first encountered his work in connection with a pulp fictioneer -- Frederick Faust. Dunn provided a cover painting and many interior illustrations for the serialized version of Max Brand’s novel Alcatraz in Country Gentleman magazine. The cover painting is striking -- a large, black stallion atop a craggy outcropping. Dunn’s rough, broad brushstrokes capture the untamed nature of the horse and the wildness of its environment. The picture shines forth the spirit of Brand’s novel brilliantly.
I knew little about Dunn at the time, other than he was a student of Howard Pyle. I’ve since found out a bit more.
Thanks to the Louisville Free Public Library’s Inter-Library Loan staff, I’ve been able to peruse Robert F. Karolevitz’s The Prairie Is My Garden: The Story of Harvey Dunn, Artist (Aberdeen, South Dakota: North Plains Press, revised 1972) and Where Your Heart Is: The Story of Harvey Dunn, Artist (Aberdeen, South Dakota: North Plains Press, 1970), essentially a expanded version of the former book that contains more reproductions of pictures.
As I noted, Dunn isn’t normally considered a pulp artist. But the subjects of his paintings -- historical adventure, the frontier, pioneer life -- and his influence on many subsequent illustrators make him worth examining by pulp fans.
A brief look at Dunn’s life: He was born Harvey Thomas Dunn on a South Dakota homestead near a buffalo trace not far from De Smet, March 8, 1884. He attended the single-room District One rural school of Esmond Township, where he showed some artistic ability. Despite his father’s reluctance, Harvey enrolled at the South Dakota Agricultural College (as South Dakota State University was then named) in Brookings in 1901. Encouraged there by an art teacher, Ada Caldwell, who had studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the Pratt Institute, Dunn left South Dakota to study at the Chicago Art Institute in 1902.
Dunn didn’t study composition -- apparently the skill to compose a picture just came naturally to him. But he studied hard for two years, and his instructors counseled him to seek further instruction with Howard Pyle, the top illustrator of the day. Dunn traveled to Wilmington, Delaware, showed Pyle his samples, and soon the 20-year-old from the western plains began his studies with one of the most famous illustrators in America.
Dunn studied with Pyle in Wilmington and Chadd’s Ford, Pennsylvania, for two years. Pyle advised Dunn in 1906 to begin his professional career. Dunn established a studio in Wilmington and soon began selling pictures to Scribner’s, Collier’s, Harper’s, and other popular magazines. He had a vigorous, realistic style and worked quickly. These traits made him a favorite with magazine editors. For example, according to Karolevitz, “he was able, on one occasion, to turn out 55 completed illustrations in just eleven weeks for various clients.” (33, Prairie)
Like his contemporary, N.C. Wyeth, Dunn was a big man, and he painted on a large scale, filling big canvases with color with large brush strokes. Karolevitz quotes illustrator Grant Reynard (who, like Dean Cornwell, was one of Dunn’s students), “He was a whale of a man, a veritable pioneer hulk of a man, with a head reminding you of a cross between an Indian chief and a Viking. He looked as though he could easily bite a spike in two with one crunch of his broad jaws.”
In 1908, Dunn married Tulla Krebs, daughter of the founder of the Krebs Pigment and Chemical Co., which was later sold to DuPont in 1929. Even without the income from his prodigious artistic output, Dunn was assured a comfortable financial station thanks to his in-laws.
In 1914 they moved closer to his New York markets and settled in Leonia, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from The Bronx. The next year, he began following the footsteps of his famous mentor, Pyle, by taking on students at what he called the Leonia School of Illustration.
After the United States declared war on Germany April 6, 1917, Dunn joined the Pictorial Publicity Division of the Committee on Public Relations. He went to Europe and sketched at the front lines, drawing battle grounds and soldiers and all types of scenes of war. He was 33 years old.
When he was discharged at war’s end in 1919, he found his experiences a ripe harvest for many paintings about the war. Much of his war-related work eventually appeared in American Legion magazine. That same year, his family moved to Tenafly, New Jersey.
Dunn began to travel to the plains each summer, visiting De Smet and the region in which he grew up. He started painting many prairie-themed works about frontier life -- not for clients, but to suit his own passions. These paintings have a large, roughhewn character that nearly aligns them with a sort of brilliant folk art. There are no action poses as one might find illustrating a Zane Grey novel, but they are heroic in their presentation of daily life on the prairie frontier.
In 1950, Dunn hung a batch of 42 such prairie paintings for an exhibit to accompany a local festival in De Smet. Although the town had a population of only 1,184, more than 1,500 visitors signed the exhibit register on opening day, and more than 5,000 visitors signed it throughout the summer the paintings remained on the walls. As the exhibit came to a close, Dunn donated the paintings -- with more to come -- to form a collection at South Dakota State College.
Dunn was a smoker, but he had quit the habit in the early 1940s. Still, his health began to bother him during that summer of 1950. Eventually his ailment was diagnosed as cancer. He received treatment in Chicago during 1952 according to the tenets of Christian Science, which his mother had followed and which his wife adhered. He died in Tenafly October 29, 1952.
Harvey Dunnisms:
* "Art schools teach complexities, I teach the simplicities. The only purpose in my being here is to get you to think pictorially."
* "Paint a little less of the facts and a little more of the spirit. Paint more with feeling than with thought; when intellect comes in, art goes out."
* "Good enough is no damn good."
* "Art is the music to which the common facts of life are played."
Links:
All the books about Dunn mentioned in this article are out of print. But you can purchase the entry on Dunn from Gale's Contemporary Authors in digital format from Amazon.com by clicking here.
The South Dakota Art Museum has an article on Dunn, which you can read by clicking here.
There's an article on Dunn at the Bud Plant Illustrated Books web site, which you can visit by clicking here.
Minnesota Public Radio has an article about restoring Dunn's paintings on its web site, here.
You can see some of Dunn's paintings online at the Biggs Museum of American Art web site, here.
Posted by ds at July 7, 2006 10:17 PM
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