Walt Reed's Archive Comes to St. Louis!
Here's an exciting announcement. The Modern Graphic History Library at Washington University has acquired a major resource for illustration research: the Walt Reed Illustration Collection. Walt Reed founded Illustration House in 1974. Starting in Westport, CT and moving to Manhattan, IH became the pre-eminent source for artwork produced for illustration purposes in the United States.
Walt wrote The Illustrator in America and monographs on Harvey Dunn, John Clymer and others. Walt is now in his 90s. His son Roger Reed is president of Illustration House. We have worked with Roger over the past two years on putting together the package that has come to the MGHL. It includes 1200 illustrated books, 8000 magazines, 250,000 tearsheets and 140 original works.
This material is truly wonderful stuff, and a treasure trove for students, professionals, cultural historians and others. Special thanks for Jaleen Grove, for the role she played in the process.
A press release describing this in greater detail:https://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/26110.aspx
On November 20–a week from Wednesday–we will be celebrating the arrival of the Walt Reed collection. We will be hosting a reception for Roger Reed at 5:30 in the Art and Architecture Library reading room. We're creating an exhibition from the Reed Collection in the A&A library which will open at that time. Roger will deliver a public lecture at 6:30 in Steinberg Auditorium.
For all those within range of St. Louis: come celebrate with us on the 20th!
J.C. Leyendecker, book cover design, The Crimson Conquest, 1907
the cover of Walt Reed's Illustrator in America, featuring a reproduction of The Nation Builders (1903) by Howard Pyle
Harry Stacy Benton, painting for Cream of Wheat advertisement, 1908
Orson Lowell, cartoon for Life Magazine, September, 1912. (Yes, that's a man on a leash wearing horse blinders. Tension over gender roles?) The Lowell drawing is surprisingly large in scale, and shockingly refined. We have three such drawings in the collection. We also have 82 small studies by Lowell. So much more to see!