Monday, May 30, 2011

A Story of 2000 A.D.

Frank Leyendecker was overshadowed in his illustration career by his brother Joe. Frank's work was just as vivid and vivacious, but didn't quite have the distinctive stylizing that JC had. I, for one, certainly wish Frank had illustrated more books, especially in the realm of fantasy, such as this sweet little volume by Rudyard Kipling:

With the Night Mail — what a great cover binding!

FX Leyendecker — what great endpapers!

FX Leyendecker — what a great frontispiece!

Title page

Above, for some reason a ringer is thrown in here — H Reuterdahl

FX Leyendecker

FX Leyendecker

7 comments:

Diana said...

These are really wonderful--thank you. I really enjoy seeing all your posts!

Li-An said...

I did not know what he made books illustration. Very interesting.

Thomas Haller Buchanan said...

Hi Diana, thanks!

Hi Li-An, doesn't it leave you with a hunger for him to have done more of this kind of thing?

Vincent Nappi said...

wow, I never knew he did book illustration. it's great to see work he did in his own element, out from under the ad shadow JC definately cast!

Li-An said...

Well, if you have some more :-)

Annie said...

Hi Thom,
The endpapers are my favorite! Thank you for posting these.

Daniel [oeconomist.com] said...

Excerpts from an interesting essay on the brothers Leyendecker appear at Today's Inspiration.