James Allen

James Edmund Allen (February 23, 1894 – September 9, 1964) was an American illustrator, printmaker, and painter. His works include a significant body of lithographs and etchings showing steelworkers, pipe workers, and other aspects of American industrial life, carefully composed compositions depicting "the daily heroism of America's industrial workers." Allen was also a prolific illustrator who, working mostly in oil, contributed numerous illustrations to stories in popular magazines of the day. He has been misidentified in many references as James Edward Allen.

Early life When Allen was three his family moved to a rural area outside Anaconda, Montana. Known as "Edd" to his family and friends, he and his younger brother, Elmer "Lee" Allen (1896–1971), loved the rugged outdoor life in Montana and the values of persistence and self-reliance it instilled. They learned horse training from the Blackfoot Indians, earning the nickname "Horse Whisperers". It was also during this time that James began developing his skills as an artist, concentrating on outdoor scenes portraying men at work. This style, portraying the muscle of America, became the hallmark of his future success as an artist.

In 1913 he moved to Chicago to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. There he became a friend of future illustrator J. Allen St. John. By 1915 he was studio assistant to his art teacher, Alexis Jean Fournier. Soon after, he moved to New York where he took classes at the Art Students' League, the Grand Central School of Art, and the Hans Hoffman School.

Career James Allen began his over 30-year career as illustrator with the People's Popular Monthly in 1913. In 1916 James E. Allen moved to Interlaken, New Jersey, living among other artists in the well-known Interlaken Colony near Asbury Park, New York. He was soon selling freelance illustrations to magazines and book publishers in nearby Philadelphia and New York City. As a staff artist for Doubleday, Page and Company, he illustrated a 17-volume edition of the works of Guy de Maupassant, and later works by Gopal Mukerji and Emma-Lindsay Squier. He also illustrated the popular Sinclair Dinosaur Book for the Sinclair Refining Company.

In 1917 James and Elmer joined the United States Armed Forces and served with the American Expeditionary Forces in Germany where James became a 2nd Lieutenant and flier. In 1919 he resumed his career as a freelance illustrator. There he experimented with various artistic media, making lithographs and etchings for the first time. Allen systematically absorbed the teachings of his "graphic heroes" Kasimir Malevich and Paul Cezanne. He admired the work of the Cubists and George Rouault, but he continued to search for economy of line and careful orchestration of tone in his own work.

Allen and Grace returned to New York City in November 1925 aboard the SS America, not, as asserted by some sources, due to the economic realities of the Great Depression some years later. He resumed work in commercial illustration and continued to hone his skills as a printmaker under Joseph Pennell and William Auerbach-Levy. During this period he also studied with Arshile Gorky and Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art as well as with sculptor Naum M. Los to improve his sense of 3-dimensional form.

While some sources claim a relationship with the Work Projects Administration (WPA), this appears not to be true. David W. Keihl writes "James E. Allen valued the worth of hard work and personal ingenuity for survival. He did not participate in the WPA programmes".

In 1932, Allen first entered his prints in juried exhibitions and his work began to receive widespread academic and critical acclaim. That year his "The Builders" received both a Shaw Prize from New York's Salmagundi Club and a Henry B. Shope Award from the Society of American Etchers, now known as the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA). A year later, "Brazilian Builders" took a Charles M. Lea Award at the Philadelphia Print Club Exhibition. Allen also began exhibiting his work in galleries during the 1930s, including at Kennedy and Company and the Grand Central Art Gallery. He later exhibited, became a member and acted as a juror for exhibitions at the Society of American Etchers. Some 4 million albums were handed out at Sinclair Gas Stations as a promotional item. He took for inspiration the dinosaurs displayed at the "A Century of Progress" World's Fair, which had opened the previous year in Chicago, and the work of Charles R. Knight. Typical of his dedication, he undertook his own scientific studies under Br. Barnum Brown at the American Museum of Natural History to assure the accuracy of his subjects. In 1938 Allen produced a series of eight lithographs of dinosaurs for Sinclair Refining Company advertisements.

But it is for his images of industrial workers from the 1930s that Allen is best known. In scenes of steelworkers such as "The Builders", "The Connectors", "Skyriders" and "Up Above the World", he creates "a vivid and suggestive picture of the powerful rhythm of daily labour and of the fearless readiness of the workers to perform their allotted tasks". In 1937 he received a commission to create twelve lithographs for the United States Pipe and Foundry Company, showing laborers installing giant pipelines in varied settings.

Later years In 1943 Allen abandoned printmaking in order to study abstract painting with Hans Hofmann. In 1944 and 1945, Kindred, MacLean & Co. commissioned two new lithographs, "Caribou" and "Elk", as Christmas promotionals. In 1946 he became an art teacher of printmaking at the National Academy of Design in New York City. He retired from illustration in the 1950s but continued to exhibit his prints and paintings at fine art galleries. He later developed a degenerative brain disease, diagnosed as Huntington's chorea, and one of the consequences of his illness was that he destroyed many of the preparatory sketches for the prints. A more comprehensive catalog of his works, including Allen's illustration art, is now available as part of an online exhibit about the artist at Stanford University. Significant collections of his prints can be found at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Allen was a prolific painter who prepared most of his illustrations in oil.