Dean Cornwell ("Dean of Illustrators")

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Memorial ID: 115204140

Known as the "Dean of Illustrators" so dubbed by Norman Rockwell. Another one of the 20th Centuries Great American Illustrators.

"Cornwell is the illustrator par excellence. His work is approached by few and over-topped by none. He is a born artist." --James Montgomery Flagg

His place of burial is currently Unknown.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Cornwell

Dean Cornwell (March 5, 1892 – December 4, 1960) was an American illustrator and muralist. His oil paintings were frequently featured in popular magazines and books as literary illustrations, advertisements, and posters promoting the war effort. Throughout the first half of the 20th century he was a dominant presence in American illustration. At the peak of his popularity he was nicknamed the "Dean of Illustrators".

Background

Cornwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky. His father, Charles L. Cornwell, was a civil engineer whose drawings of industrial subjects fascinated Cornwell as a child. He began his professional career as a cartoonist for the Louisville Herald. Soon thereafter he moved to Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute and worked for the Chicago Tribune. In 1915 he moved to New Rochelle, New York, a well known artist colony, and studied in New York City under Harvey Dunn at the Art Students League of New York. Eventually he traveled to London to study mural painting as an apprentice to Frank Brangwyn.

Cornwell's paintings were in Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, and Good Housekeeping magazines, illustrating the work of authors including Pearl S. Buck, Lloyd Douglas, Edna Ferber, Ernest Hemingway, W. Somerset Maugham, and Owen Wister. He painted murals for the Los Angeles Public Library, the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands, California, the Eastern Airlines Building (now 10 Rockefeller Plaza), executed Federal Art Project murals in two post offices, Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Morganton, North Carolina, with other murals in the Warwick New York Hotel in New York City, the New England Telephone headquarters building in Boston, the Davidson County Courthouse and Sevier State Office Building in Tennessee, and the Centre William Rappard in Geneva, Switzerland. His mural for the Los Angeles Public Library was a rendering of the history of California. Cornwell's Feb 1953 cover of a riverboat for True Magazine was later made into a US Postage stamp as part of the USPS's 2001 American Illustrators series.

Cornwell taught and lectured at the Art Students League in New York. He served as president of the Society of Illustrators from 1922 to 1926, and was elected to its Hall of Fame in 1959. In 1934, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1940. He served as President of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1953 to 1957.

He died in New York City.

Examples of Cornwell's Work

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Cornwell#Examples_of_Cornwell's_Work

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https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/dean-cornwell/

Illustrator and mural painter Dean Cornwell executed several exceptional commissions on Capitol Hill in Nashville during the Great Depression. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 5, 1892. Cornwell began his professional career as a cartoonist for the Louisville Herald but soon relocated to Chicago, where he worked in the art department of the Chicago Tribune and studied at the Art Institute. In 1915 he moved to New York City, where he studied under Harvey Dunn and became a successful illustrator for many national magazines.

Desiring to study mural painting, Cornwell traveled to London, where he served as an apprentice under the internationally recognized British muralist Frank Brangwyn. After his return to America Cornwell painted murals for several years at the Los Angeles Public Library and the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands, California. Other notable commissions include the Eastern Airlines Building in Rockefeller Plaza, the U.S. Post Office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the Raleigh Room at the Hotel Warwick in New York City, and the General Motors Exhibition at the New York World's Fair in 1939.

In Tennessee Cornwell is best known for murals created for the Davidson County Courthouse in 1937 and for the Sevier State Office Building in 1941. The Public Works Administration funded the construction of both buildings during the New Deal era. The murals in the main lobby of the Davidson County Courthouse feature heroic figures representing Industry, Agriculture, Commerce, and Statesmanship superimposed over maps of Nashville and Davidson County. The Sevier State Office Building murals, titled The Discovery of Tennessee and The Development of Tennessee, depict important figures in Tennessee's history. Both murals were created under the auspices of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal cultural programs. Cornwell died December 4, 1960, in New York City.