Coles Phillips Fadeaway Girl cover for "Life" (1911): rare, beautifully framed antique
$300.00
Cover Illustration title: "A Troublesome Toy"
By Coles Phillips
September 28, 1911 issue
IMAGE INFORMATION
Image Size: H 12.00” x W 10.00”
Matted & Framed: H 18.00” x W 16.00”
Framed Price: $300.00
Packaging and shipping approximately $35.00
Life magazine’s managing editor, John Ames Mitchell, met and hired CP in 1907. At Life, the young artist worked alongside one of the country’s most popular and influential illustrators, being Charles Dana Gibson.
Beginning in the early 1890s, Gibson had achieved fame with deft pen and ink sketches of a new species of American woman. CBG said once that he encountered her on every street corner in New York, the smart, beautiful and independent female cosmopolitan.
When CP arrived in the city, the Gibson Girl was about to enter her second decade. Not only had cosmopolitan New York changes, so had the technology used by magazines like Life. Design and color were replacing line and form. Focusing on these things, CP devised a visual deception in which he merged the bodies of his subjects into the color field of his illustration's background.
Life’s readers were delighted by CP’s ingenious innovation. So popular was his “Fadeaway Girl” that CP continued to rely on her through his long career. The one he created for the September 28, 1911 issue is one his finest early caricatures.
