{"id":985,"date":"2006-10-30T02:04:33","date_gmt":"2006-10-30T01:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=985"},"modified":"2008-07-16T01:12:45","modified_gmt":"2008-07-16T00:12:45","slug":"the-art-of-virgil-finlay-1914-1971","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/10\/30\/the-art-of-virgil-finlay-1914-1971\/","title":{"rendered":"The art of Virgil Finlay, 1914\u20131971"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therionweb.de\/comics\/finlay\/volume1\/virgil_finlay_mrs_amworth.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/10\/finlay1.jpg\" id=\"image986\" alt=\"finlay1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Mrs Amworth.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Another great artist of the macabre and supernatural, Virgil Finlay was the one of the most talented and imaginative illustrators of his generation. Unlike older contemporaries such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bpib.com\/illustrat\/leyendec.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Leyendecker<\/a>, who became wealthy producing elegant yet often bland advertising art, much of Finlay&#8217;s best work was for pulp magazines like <a href=\"http:\/\/members.aol.com\/weirdtales\/artists.htm#artists\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Weird Tales<\/em><\/a> and <em>Amazing Stories<\/em>  which paid a pittance and printed his finely-hatched scratchboard drawings on the cheapest paper. The advantages to this work, such as they were, came in the access to a huge and appreciative audience, and the chance to provide the first illustrations for what would turn out to be classic genre stories. Finlay illustrated a number of HP Lovecraft&#8217;s tales and received the highest praise from the author in doing so. His illustration for Lovecraft&#8217;s <em>The Thing on the Doorstep<\/em> (below) contains a slight nod to Harry Clarke&#8217;s <em>Valdemar<\/em> picture (see previous post) with its distant, highlighted doorway, a detail that Clarke himself borrowed from the celebrated <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/wm\/paint\/auth\/velazquez\/velazquez.meninas.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Las Meninas<\/em><\/a> by Vel\u00e1zquez.<\/p>\n<p>Therionweb has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.therionweb.de\/comics\/finlay.htm\" target=\"_blank\">five galleries<\/a> of Finlay&#8217;s pictures and Bud Plant again has a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bpib.com\/illustrat\/finlay.htm\" target=\"_blank\">brief biography<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therionweb.de\/comics\/finlay\/volume1\/virgil_finlay_abercrombie_station_002.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/10\/finlay2.jpg\" id=\"image987\" alt=\"finlay2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Abercrombie Station.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therionweb.de\/comics\/finlay\/volume1\/virgil_finlay_the_thing_on_the_doorstep.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/10\/finlay3.jpg\" id=\"image989\" alt=\"finlay3.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>The Thing on the Doorstep. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.therionweb.de\/comics\/finlay\/volume1\/virgil_finlay_six_and_ten.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/10\/finlay4.jpg\" id=\"image990\" alt=\"finlay4.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Six and Ten. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/the-illustrators-archive\/\">The illustrators archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mrs Amworth. Another great artist of the macabre and supernatural, Virgil Finlay was the one of the most talented and imaginative illustrators of his generation. Unlike older contemporaries such as Joseph Leyendecker, who became wealthy producing elegant yet often bland advertising art, much of Finlay&#8217;s best work was for pulp magazines like Weird Tales and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2006\/10\/30\/the-art-of-virgil-finlay-1914-1971\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The art of Virgil Finlay, 1914\u20131971&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,30,22,48,26,38],"tags":[99,1687,473,1895,2396],"class_list":["post-985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-black-white","category-horror","category-illustrators","category-lovecraft","category-pulp","tag-harry-clarke","tag-hp-lovecraft","tag-velazquez","tag-virgil-finlay","tag-weird-tales"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-fT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}