J. C. Leyendecker, 1874-1951
By Toby Berryman
The Little Boy on Santa’s Lap [Saturday Evening Post cover, 22 December], 1923, magazine print edition.
With praise from Presidents (Roosevelt lauded his “superb example[s] of the common man”) and a weekly circulation of his work (courtesy of The Saturday Evening Post, for whom he illustrated 322 covers over a half-century career) numbering in the millions - one might hope, or even expect, to know the name Joseph Christian Leyendecker. And yet this figure, who perhaps even represented the apogee of the so-called ‘Golden Age of American Illustration’, appears somewhat lost to modern scholarship and a contemporary audience.
Rather tragically, his 1951 funeral was attended by only five well-wishers and infamously the inheritors of his landmark archive later sold much of it at a garden sale for $75 a-piece… yes, seriously. However, such misfortune is not to deny the influence of the German-born, French-schooled, American graphic-artist. It was Leyendecker’s oeuvre that popularised our modern visualisation of Santa Claus, that birthed the image of a New Year Baby, and even that started the tradition of gifting flowers on Mother’s Day. He mentored the legendary artist Norman Rockwell and, despite eventually shying away from fame, lived to see his work jet across the globe daily, fronting five unique USPS stamps. Leyendecker has inspired projects as diverse as ‘Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire’ and ‘Team Fortress 2’, while himself producing work for a broad cross-section of US society. From the Navy, Marines, and Army, to Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble, and the Boy Scouts, the marks and influence of Leyendecker’s distinctive visual style stretch throughout the cultural heart of the 20th Century United States.
To the Vanquished [Saturday Evening Post Cover, 10 March], 1934, oil on canvas, 81 x 61 cm.
Nevertheless, it was his long-term campaigns with Cluett, Peabody & Co., for whom he created the ‘Arrow Collar Man’, that are perhaps both the best-known and most-intriguing of his commercial projects. Fifteen years after his very first professional job illustrating a Bible, Leyendecker delivered his first work for the formalwear manufacturer that would go on to typify an era of contemporary marketing, all the while driving the company’s sales to $32 million p/a (thus, cementing them as the nation’s most successful men’s clothing company). His preppy designs spoke to an American public who greatly valued sartorial choice, however it was their homoerotic charge and Leyendecker’s coded-language that likely held the greatest influence, paving the way for LGBTQ+ representation in advertising today. As one of very few known gay artists working at the time, Leyendecker took a considerable risk with his compositions, oftentimes modelling his long-term partner Charles Beach from life; this courage undoubtedly represented a considerable stride forward for the otherwise unfairly-ostracised, unjustly-outlawed, and inhumanely-treated queer community at the time.
America Calls - Enlist in the Navy, 1917, lithograph, 104 x 71 cm, The Huntington Library.
And yet, in our present day, with Leyendecker’s work dispersed far and wide (and a bulk of copy no doubt trapped in American attics, or at landfill), a once-influential man, no longer the toast of Presidents, is seemingly forgotten. Nonetheless, that one of his funeral’s five attendees was the pall-bearer Norman Rockwell speaks to the vital legacy Leyendecker has, albeit quietly, left behind.
Bibliography
Apatoff, David. “The Art of the Post: The Little Boy on Santa’s Lap”. The Saturday Evening Post. December 13, 2023. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2023/12/the-art-of-the-post-the-little-boy-on-santas-lap/.
Gopnik, Blake. “Critic’s Notebook – J.C. Leyendecker: The ‘Arrow Collar Man’ Who Hid a Radical Idea”. The New York Times, National Edition. June 29, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/arts/design/jc-leyendecker-the-arrow-collar-man-who-hid-a-radical-idea.html.
Guadagnolo, Dan. ““A Superb Example of the Common Man”: J.C. Leyendecker and the Staging of Male Consumer Desire in American Commercial Illustration, 1907-1931”. American Studies 58, No. 4 (2019): 5-32, 125.
Martin, Richard. “American Chronicle: J. C. Leyendecker’s Icons of Time”. Journal of American Culture 19, No. 1 (1996): 57-85.
Martin, Richard. “J. C. Leyendecker and the Homoerotic Invention of Men’s Fashion Icons, 1910-1930”. Prospects 21 (1996): 453-470.
Slon, Steven. “J.C. Leyendecker”. The Saturday Evening Post. November 5, 2014. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/11/j-c-leyendecker/.
Tangcay, Jazz. “Director Ryan White on Telling J.C Leyendecker’s Queer History in ‘Coded’”. Variety. June 16, 2021. https://variety.com/2021/film/markets-festivals/ryan-white-j-c-leyendecker-coded-1234998399/.