Both Charles Dean Cornwell and his sister Mary Randolph Cornwell showed artistic talent as children and parlayed their talents into successful professional careers. Their father had been a civil engineer whose engineering drawing provided Cornwell with his initial inspiration. Charles D., as he was known in those days, achieved recognition in the children's section of the Louisville Courier-Journal at age 12 and won a prize from the newspaper the following year for one of his paintings. Unhappily, within weeks of this accomplishment, his father was struck down in a street car accident, from which he never fully recovered his physical and mental abilities. Although the father lived for another 15 years, he was estranged from his family and — in his final days — pretty much a street person. Hence it fell upon his son to support the family. Young Cornwell dropped out of school for awhile and relied upon his talents for drawing and music to make ends meet — with drawings for local newspaper and jazz performances on a riverboat on the Ohio River. Back in high school, he was recognized for his art, as was his sister. In 1914 Cornwell's mother took her two grown children to Chicago, perhaps to escape the spectre of her unfortunate husband. There Fontaine Fox, a noted Louisville cartoonist, helped Cornwell obtain a position at the Chicago Tribune, where he authored several comic strips. Within a year he found work illustrating stories for The Story Press, publisher of the popular Green Book, Red Book and Blue Book series. Soon after he moved to New York to study with the illustrator Harvey Dunn, with the hope of launching a career as a freelance illustrator. Dunn had opened a school in Leonia, New Jersey, so Cornwell, his sister and his mother all moved there. Mary studied with Frank Alvah Parsons at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (what later became known as the Parsons School of Design). She rapidly achieved recognition for her talents in art and design. Cornwell was exempted from military service in World War I as being the sole support of his disabled father. After the war he married the artist Mildred Montrose Kirkham, but their union was short-lived. In 1920 he moved to the Hotel Majestic in New York, a popular residence for artists of that era. Cornwell's reputation as an illustrator grew steadily, with commissions from many national publications. He taught at the Art Students League, and by 1924 he had been chosen as President of the New York Society of Illustrators. Meanwhile his sister's career had also flourished; she specialized in the commercial drawing of interiors and taught at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. In 1927 Cornwell's work underwent a major shift in emphasis. He began a five-year project to complete murals for the Los Angeles Public Library, which included a year in England where he studied with the prominent muralist Frank Brangwyn. While Cornwell turned to illustrations for income, his preference was to be a muralist, and he completed many significant murals over the rest of his career.The Valley of Silent Men, 1919The Bridge, 1921
Critical Analysis
Cornwell's role as an illustrator was such that already in the 1920s he was known of the "Dean of Illustrators". His illustrations were everywhere across America from the 1920s through the 1950s: pulp magazines, illustrated books, war posters and advertisements. There was probably no one in the country who had not seen a Cornwell illustration somewhere. Part of this was no doubt due to his energy: he regularly worked 100-hour weeks and produced a body of more than 1,000 illustrations in his career. His popular success as an illustrator made for a good living (he was paid $100,000 a year by Cosmopolitan in the late 1920s). By contrast, his murals never earned him a significant amount of money. He did receive awards for his murals, and he served as President of the National Society of Mural Painters from 1953-57.
Murals
Los Angeles, California - Central Library: Scenes from California History
New York, New York - Eastern Airlines Building (former): The History of Transportation
