Coby Whitmore

Judging Miss America, Sports Cars Just Side Lines for M.C. Whitmore

“Judging Miss America, Sports Cars Just Side Lines for M.C. Whitmore”
By Lindsey Schepmoes

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

“Judging Miss America, Sports Cars Just Side Lines for M.C. Whitmore”
By Lindsey Schepmoes

Arts and Entertainment- The Island Packet August 5th, 2005

Cover by Coby Whitmore. Article “An American Classic” by Jacquelyn Lewis.

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

"Full Circle" by Margaret Greer

“Full Circle" by Margaret Greer, published in 1998. Beaufort Lowcountry Magazine, February/ March 1998.

"The Round Table Retrospective" Booklet 1998

Booklet for the “"The Round Table Retrospective: A retrospective of fifteen Hilton Head artists friends.”
Walter Greer Gallery, March 19- April 26, 1998

Coby Whitmore on Cover of Arts and Entertainment- The Island Packet Nov 1988

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Letter to Coby Whitmore

Letters from Coby Whitmore to his mother when he was apprenticing for Haddon Sundblom.

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

“The Southern Artists: Coby Whitmore” Text by Marlyn Bowler

“The Southern Artists: Coby Whitmore” Text by Marlyn Bowler from 1983 Summer Southern Accents.

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

"Making the Transition from Illustrator to Fine Artist" by John Guy Fantucchio

Thesis paper written in 1984 by John Guy Fantucchio, entitled “Making the Transition from Illustrator to Fine Artist”
Click on the image to read each page.

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Comments on Coby Whitmore by Theodore F. Wolff

Comments on Coby Whitmore by Theodore F. Wolff during an interview in 1987.

“I’m grateful to Coby Whitmore for teaching me never to describe a picture as “merely” illustrational.

    He first made his point several years ago in a conversation about things artistic in which Joe Bowler also took part, and in which he gently chided me for occasionally rather cavalierly dismissing his profession in my articles and reviews. What he said made a great deal of sense, and I’ve tried since to mend my ways— a process, I might add, that’s been made infinitely easier by the simple expedient of thinking back to some of the superb illustrations he himself has made.

   I can’t say I remember them all. My interests in my developing years ran more towards Norman Rockwell and, occasionally, Jon Falter, but I do recall— and it seemed to happen in direct proportion to my own growing sophistication— that the work of another illustrator gradually began to demand my attention. I remember being struck with increasing frequency by certain elegant, brilliantly drawn images of daring design in which provocative color, a delicious appreciation of pretty women, and a remarkable economy of means combined to produce pictures that were a delight to look at and rewarding for a budding young artist to analyze.

   And analyze them I did— for their superb draftsmanship, unexpected and often startling linear and textural combinations; clever use of pattern, shrewd application of the principle that, often as not, “less is more,” and their overall elegance and sophistication.
    Coby Whitmore— for that was this illustrator’s name— seemed like quite a guy. Not only did I admire his work, I envied his life-style— or at least what I imagined his life-style to be. Anyone who could earn what was obviously a good living doing what he enjoyed doing while surrounded by so many cute, sexy young models had my wholehearted admiration. There, I thought, is a man who knows how to live!
   Of course, I was much younger then, and capable all too often of confusing appearance with reality. For all I know now, he could have painted all those pictures form imagination, or used plain models and transformed them into the sex-kittens for which he was so well-known. At this stage of the game it really doesn’t matter (although I must confess that I still believe Coby lived the sort of life I fantasied about so many years ago). What concerns me now is the quality of the work itself, and the remarkable skill, imagination, and professionalism that went into its creation.

   He didn’t merely produce first-rate illustrations, he epitomized much of what was good in his field for more years than he would probably care to admit. A Coby Whitmore illustration was always immediately recognizable by its air of high-style sophistication, compositional audacity, clever, often witty use of color, elegant, sparse draftsmanship, and jaunty good taste. He painted and drew the Good Life as practically an entire generation of Americans perceived it— or at least wished it to be. And he did so in a manner that not only did credit to his profession, but honored the noble traditions of art and story-telling as well.”

Comments on Coby Whitmore
 by Theodore F. Wolff, Art Critic,
The Christian Science Monitor

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Excerpts from a conversation between Coby Whitmore and Jim Littlejohn during an interview printed in Island Events Magazine.

“In 1932— the very bottom of the Depression. I was lucky, because I was working. My mother was the personnel manager of McCall’s in Philadelphia and I was working in the printing department on the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift on a 96-page fold and delivery press. We were printing Redbook.
   About 1 a.m., a distinguished-looking man, dressed in a $250 tuxedo, came into the pressroom. He was McClelland Barclay, one of the premiere illustrators of that time. He had come in to see how the color reproductions of his latest cover were going to look. I can’t say that I didn’t care anything about art at all— but what sold me on a career was this man’s lifestyle. I wanted to wear a dinner jacket like his and earn the money he made.
   On the strength of that, I quit my job, borrowed $250 and moved to Chicago, where I apprenticed myself to Haddon Sundblom, who, as a matter of fact, had formerly been an apprentice to Barclay. (Haddon Sundblom had the account from Coca-Cola to do much of their illustration, including their famous Santa Claus)
    As an apprentice, my duties included doing all the green. He hated green, said it made nauseous. Previous to my apprenticeship, I had attended the Charles F. Kettering School — a sort of unusual, progressive school which Kettering held in his greenhouse. I attended on a scholarship. We were exposed to a great many things, including some very fine art. I attended there until his son graduated— then he closed down the school. After that, I got a scholarship to the Dayton Art Institute and learned some basics there, but I had not really even considered a career until I met Barclay.
    As an apprentice with Haddon Sundblom, I was fired many times— almost once a week. Sunny spent many of his afternoons in a bar, which was down a long hall from his studio. I may have done something wrong— something that displeased him and after he sat in the bar for a while, he would come out in the hall and holler, “CO-BY! YOU’RE FIRED!”

  The next morning I would begin cleaning out my things and he would come in and say, “What are you doing,” and I would explain to him that I was fired and he would clap me on the shoulder and say, “Well, now, watch it in the future!”
   He was truly a master craftsman, and he could come in after I had been daubing and with two or three strokes, he could change everything and make it look like something.
   The first thing he did when I arrived in Chicago was to make me enroll at the Chicago Art Institute to study anatomy. Counting all my time with him, it amounted to three years.

  In 1936, I went to work for the Chicago Herald-Examiner, the most legendary newspaper the world has ever seen. The paper that inspired “The Front Page.” The paper of Hecht and MacArthur. I was a staff artist and drew everything from burlesque to furniture. It was a marvelous experience and it taught me that I could draw literally anything— and that on short notice.

    I worked for the “Examiner” for a little over a year. That’s when I got my first offer as an artist, to go to work for a studio in Cincinnati, doing commercial work.

  In 1939, I got another offer to go back to Chicago. It was a much larger studio and for several years— from 1939 to 1943— I made a lot of money doing a lot of jobs.

   The war was moving on by then, and even though I had two children, it looked like I was going to be drafted pretty soon. I went east to make contacts with the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines, hopefully, trying to find someone who would commission some work while I was in camp in the army— to help support the family.

   I met Charles E. Cooper, who ran the biggest studio in the country and he urged me to move to New York, despite the draft. “Why not get drafted from New York?” he said. He convinced me and even helped me pay my moving expenses to a small apartment in Bronxville.

   As it turned out, I wasn’t drafted, after all, and I began to hit the magazines very early. I was just lucky, I guess.”

Excerpts from a conversation between Coby Whitmore and Jim Littlejohn during an interview printed in Island Events Magazine.

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Comments on Coby Whitmore by Joseph Bowler

“Coby Whitmore, in 1948, was a superstar among American illustrators and he was my idol. Imagine an eighteen year old aspiring artist, who had no training, with the opportunity to apprentice with the leading illustrators of the day. That was my good fortune at the Charles E. Cooper Studios in New York. What turned out to be the best part of the arrangement was that Coby Whitmore was there and as generous with his time and attention as the leading teacher could possibly be.

   During my first months of apprenticeship, matting his paintings, cleaning his brushes and palette and watching every brush stroke during the day, I would practice painting at night. Within six months, Coby had taken a sample painting of mine to a national magazine, Cosmopolitan, and sold it as an illustration for what will always seem to me to be the largest sum of money I will ever receive.

    Coby epitomizes the great sharing of knowledge and information in the tradition of history’s finest artists who pass on to others what they have learned form earlier generations.

   Over the forty years of our friendship, we have helped each other when in trouble with paintings, given and accepted critiques and haunted each other’s studios.

   Coby Whitmore has been the most important person in my development as an artist.”

Comments on Coby Whitmore
By Joseph Bowler, Hilton Head Island, S.C.

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Nine Wonderful Coby Whitmore Cosmopolitan Covers from the 40s and 50s

An article from Flashbak about Coby Whitmore and his work for the Cosmopolitan Magazine. Click on this link to view.
https://flashbak.com/coby-whitmore-cosmopolitan-covers-22349/

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

The Art of the Post: Coby Whitmore Illustrates a New Era of “Boy Meets Girl”

An article by David Apatoff in The Saturday Evening Post about Coby Whitmore. Click this link to view.
https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/04/art-post-coby-whitmore-perfects-boy-meets-girl/

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Today’s Inspiration Facebook Group: Coby Whitmore

Click on this link to view Today’s Inspiration Facebook group’s album dedicated to admiring and sharing Coby Whitmore’s work.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.582688558444122&type=3

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.

Joe Bowler Interview, Part 2: The Cooper Studio Years Begin

Interview conducted by Leif Peng. Features numerous of Coby Whitmore’s illustrations. Click on this link to view the article.
http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2013/01/joe-bowler-interview-part-2-cooper.html

To view more information about Coby Whitmore, including his artwork, please visit the section of my website dedicated to Coby Whitmore by clicking on this link.