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Ralph Pallen Coleman

Ralph Pallen Coleman (June 27, 1892 – April 3, 1968) was an American painter and illustrator. His career spanned more than half a century during which he illustrated stories for many magazines, and later, religious illustrations and paintings that gave faith and inspiration to millions. His work in countless magazines epitomized the yeoman life of the artist during the Golden Age of Illustration in American art and publishing.

Early Life

Coleman began his education by attending grade school at the Camac School in North Philadelphia. His earliest existing drawing is a pencil sketch of Revolutionary soldiers that he drew in 1901, when he was nine years old. Like many other boys of the time, he was athletically inclined and had a penchant for getting them together by organizing baseball teams at his home church, Bethlehem Presbyterian Church. But drawing was never far from his mind, and when he received a partial scholarship to attend art school he left the staid academic world of Central High School, with its "professors" in frock coats teaching Latin and Greek. Philadelphia School of Industrial Art was then part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is now an independent university called The University of the Arts. It was here that he was learned the craft and was highly influenced by Walter H.Everett, a teacher of illustration and one of the most highly regarded technicians of his time. Coleman displayed his facility for drawing the human face and figure and won first prize in a life drawing competition. Shortly thereafter, in 1913, he decided to strike out on his own, taking a small studio, with two other students at 6th & Walnut Streets just a few blocks from the school and across the street from Curtis Publishing Company. Early assignments were not easy to come by for the new illustrator. His first sale — a small line drawing to the American Sunday School Union — brought in $7.50. Sometimes, Coleman turned author so that he would end up both writing and illustrating his own stories.

Periodical Magazine Illustrations

It was characteristic of the young illustrator that he launched his career without completing his studies at the School of Industrial Art. Coleman had concluded that he was equipped to be an illustrator and felt that the sooner he entered the commercial field, the better. His was not an impetuous gesture, but rather a calculated course of action based on self-confidence and financial need. During the Teens much of Coleman's work was for newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the now defunct North American; for book jackets; and for religious publishing houses. During the first World War he executed a variety of war-related posters (Lafayette fought for America . . . Won't you?) and illustrations including a Literary Digest cover in 1917 featuring a doughboy going over the top in France. He also was a member of the Marine Camouflage Dept. in Philadelphia where he and several other artists directed the painting of both combat and merchant vessels. It was finally in 1915 that Coleman achieved a lifelong ambition when he sold his first illustration to the Saturday Evening Post. "High, Low and Close" was the first story which Ralph Pallen Coleman ever illustrated for The Saturday Evening Post. He delivered the black and white picture to the Post on May 12, 1915, one of three images he painted for the story. Subsequently, he did scores of paintings for the Post, then the outstanding magazine in the United States and the flagship publication of Curtis Publishing Co.

During the Twenties, Coleman hitched his star to the magazines, regularly turning out over 100 illustrations a year. He started the decade by illustrating for the popluar "pulps" of the period. By the mid-Twenties he was a regular contributor to Liberty, Holland’s, MacLean’s, Blue Book, Green Book and Short Stories Magazines. His illustrations were completely in tune with the times, as symbolized by the fact that in 1922 Coleman did the illustrations for the serial "Flaming Youth," a phrase that became the symbol of that gay and gaudy decade. During 1924 alone, Coleman completed 178 illustrations. But he would have to wait until the Depression Years to be a regular in the "big leagues" of Curtis, Crowell-Collier and Hearst Publishing Companies. By the end of the decade, he had become a regular contributor to the flagship magazine of the Hearst magazine empire — Cosmopolitan, and its sister publication, Good Housekeeping.

During the Thirties, Ralph Pallen Coleman's career flourished with assignments to illustrate stories for such distinguished authors as W. Somerset Maugham, Louis Bromfield, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Booth Tarkington, Sir Phillip Gibbs, Rex Beach, Clarence Buddington Kelland, and Edison Marshall. In 1931, after a hiatus of four years, Coleman returned to the pages of The Saturday Evening Post, still being edited by the legendary George Horace Lorimer. Much to his surprise, he began receiving assignments from the Post's archrival — Colliers. During the same week, Coleman had illustrations running in both the Post and Colliers. It was during this period that he used his brush to leap across the barriers of space and present his viewers with exotic scenes of faraway places they would never be able to visit in person. Coleman became the nation's most sought-after illustrator of exotic stories laid in such storied spots as the South Seas, the Far East and Africa. Employing a painstaking research effort, the artist turned out dozens of paintings, usually in full color, although not always produced thus, depicting pith-helmeted explorers, bare-breasted natives, lithe jungle cats and other accoutrements of a Tropicana that he personally had never visited.

More than a few of Ralph Pallen Coleman's illustrations from this period carried a strong outline or vignette that clearly set off the main subject of the painting. It was one of the defining techniques of the era that, regrettably, is little used in modern magazines. But it is one that Coleman mastered as did few other illustrators and almost became a trademark of his work in publication. Like many of his fellow illustrators of the period, he was integrally involved in the tools of the trade: from making brushes, paints, easels, picture frames, and the photographic process to capture the images from which he painted.

Religious Illustrations

Ralph Pallen Coleman, a lifelong Presbyterian was an elder and trustee at Grace Presbyterian Church in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. Religious images were always very powerful messages for him and he was able to integrate this passion into his professional career. His first commission as an illustrator was for a drawing at the request of the American Sunday School Union in 1914. Even during the Twenties and Thirties, when his output was primarily for the popular magazines, Coleman turned out a steady, if limited, stream of religious and Biblical paintings for Providence Lithograph Co. and various denominational publishing houses. But it was not until the 1940's when he was well into middle age, that Coleman embarked on a virtually new career — that of Biblical and religious artist, producing more than 400 religious paintings and murals.

In his later years, primarily the quarter century after 1942, Coleman was to use his illustrating skills once again to leap across the barriers of time and present a realistic kaleidoscope of hundreds of Biblical illustrations, climaxed by the most complete series of paintings on the life of Christ ever done by a contemporary artist.

"The Eternal Christ," a haunting painting of Christ on the field of battle, was painted by Coleman at the suggestion of the wife of the minister of his home church in 1942. The painting was reproduced as a church bulletin and several million copies were distributed to both civilians and servicemen during World War II. Thereafter, the "slick" magazine illustrator turned his talents primarily to paintings of a religious or Biblical nature.

Few contemporary artists studied all aspects of Christ and his life as intensively and as comprehensively as Coleman did. From this continuing study, he developed his own strong convictions of how Jesus might have looked. These convictions are thoroughly mirrored in Coleman's portrayals of the Savior, which unite an essential spirituality with the warm humanity of a strong and vigorous young man. There is a remarkable consistency to Coleman's conception of Christ, a characteristic that was especially helpful to him when he made 17 paintings for Donald F. Irvin's "Life of Jesus" in 1951, 57 paintings for "The Way, The Truth and The Life" and 42 illustrations for Hurlbut's "Story of the Bible."

In his later years, Mr. Coleman ventured beyond pure illustration to design a series of stained glass windows on the life of Christ for Grace Presbyterian Church and lectured extensively in the Philadelphia area showing slides of his paintings. Coleman’s work endures as a source of inspiration in many places in the Philadelphia area. His commissioned works set the tone for the Whitemarsh Park chapel. His work in stained glass adorns the Grace Presbyterian Church where he once served as an elder for many years. A collection of his later work and papers resides in the Special Collections Research Center at the Syracuse University. Active and productive to the end of his full life, Ralph Pallen Coleman had on his easel an unfinished head of Christ when he passed away on April 3, 1968 at the age of 75 years.

Personal Life

Ralph Pallen Coleman was a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was born to William Herr Coleman, a Philadelphia grocer, and Emma Coleman, a saloon keeper and had one brother, William B. Coleman. Coleman married Florence L. Haeberle of Philadelphia on June 2, 1917 and they had one son, Ralph P. Coleman, Jr. He was a founding director and vice president of the Over-the-Counter Securities Fund, Inc., of Oreland, Pennsylvania and a founding officer of the Baederwood, Inc. land holding company. He served as a governor of the Health Club of the Philadelphia Young Men’s Christian Association, the Huguenot Society of Pennsylvania and a member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the Society of Illustrators. He passed away at the age of 75 on April 3, 1968 after an illness of six months.

References

American Art Archives. "Ralph Pallen Coleman", http://www.americanartarchives.com/coleman,rf.htm

Reed, Walter. "Ralph Pallen Coleman." "The Illustrator in America/1900-1960's. 1966.

External Links

The Collected works of Ralph Pallen Coleman