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This is a very fine original oil on canvas for Liberty Magazine covers, signed lower right corner by Leslie Thrasher (1889 - 1936). The weekly cover of the popular mass circulation magazine was the springboard for several famous American illustrators. Magazine art editors demanded pictures of everyday people in simple everyday situations, thus setting the sameness in trend, style and subject matter of the various artists of that era. Leslie Thrasher's primary contribution to Liberty- and to illustration history- was his series of covers, the so- called Continuity Covers, which ran under the title " For the Love of Lil ". The pictorial serial itself was a fanciful, but sensitive, representation of everyday life from the standpoint of " the modern generation ". Liberty readers knew all the intimate details of Lil's life-Lily herself, her doting parents, her two brothers, her befuddled boyfriend- then- husband " Sandy ", and her baby Ulysses. All in all, Thrasher depicted an appealing reality, convincingly rendering important details such as the position of a hand, an appropriate facial expression, and authentic props. The canvas measures approximately 16" X 21", and appeared on The Liberty Magazine covers in May 21 1927. This painting, together with the other 36 original oils by L. Thrasher was exhibited at State University, Farmingdale, N.Y. began March 23 through April 13 in 1973. This is the Liberty cover painting chosen by the editors of Rivals of Rockwell (Roettger, Crescent Press, 1992) as a chapter introduction illustration to represent Leslie Thrasher's Liberty magazine work, and it appears as a full page illustration in that important historical reference (p.25). |
