by James Taylor
After Flagg returned to the USA he married Nellie McCormick, a wealthy St. Louis socialite eleven years Flagg’s senior. She supported him initially until he became established. They lived in various homes in California, Florida and Virginia and then in 1904, after an unsuccessful period when Flagg attempted to work full-time as a portrait painter, he moved to New York City where he leased a studio and decided to focus on magazine illustration. He worked hard, averaging an illustration a day for many years, and contributed to Collier’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Weekly, Judge, Ladies’ Home Journal, Leslie’s, Life, McClure’s Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post (now best remembered for the Norman Rockwell covers), as well as Scribner’s Magazine. In addition, he produced numerous illustrations – some anonymously – for advertising companies (including Adler Rochester Overcoats and Edison Photo Company), also for books and magazines, as well as humorous and political cartoons. He drew Jeeves for P.G. Wodehouse.65
Flagg had a long and immensely rewarding relationship with Life magazine, working there for more than twenty years and creating within those pages the celebrated ‘Flagg Girls’ – tall, wide-shouldered beauties with alluring lips and symmetrical faces. His personal and romantic life was troubled and this was not helped by the dalliances with models and sitters. He later recalled: ‘Many of those girls were so beautiful; and artists are such fools! If I had this side of life to live over again, I’d again be just such a fool as I was!’ Flagg married twice and had one daughter, Faith, born in 1925 (when he was 48) whom he doted upon when he was around.66
‘Wake Up, America!’ 1917 (LoC)
Leslie’s magazine cover featuring Uncle Sam (Priv.)
However, Meyer confirmed that Flagg was capable of long-lasting friendships and they included the artist and fellow student at the Arts Student League, Walter Appleton Clark, until his early death: ‘I loved and admired Walter; a grand human and a great artist… to my mind he was second only to Howard Pyle as America’s number one illustrator… It seems fantastic that today he is unknown except by some of the old-timers who still recognize that no artist now living is his superior.’
The American wartime publicity machine
Flagg’s I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY poster is recognised as one of the ‘Treasures of the American Library of Congress’. Their poster measures 39½ x 29 inches (sheet and image).67 The National Museum of American History (part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.) claim to have Flagg’s original artwork for the poster in their collections. Details of it have appeared on the museum’s website in a section called ‘The Price of Freedom: Americans at War’, but the artwork created in watercolour by Flagg is now deemed too fragile for permanent display.
According to Natalie Elder, a specialist in the museum’s Division of Armed Forces History, ‘the artwork itself has color shifted, so the colors do not appear as they originally were’. Examination of a colour scan of the artwork points to the possibility that this artwork might actually relate to Flagg’s design for the cover of Leslie’s magazine where his Uncle Sam made its first appearance, rather than the actual poster design, although the museum appears confident in its claim. Elder has said ‘that it was donated by Flagg through a Colonel James Moss of the US Army in 1934. I haven’t found any documentation as to why he decided to donate this to the Smithsonian. I know he also gave items to the Library of Congress.’
According to Library of Congress records, Flagg’s Uncle Sam first appeared as the cover of Leslie’s magazine on 6th July 1916 with the title ‘What Are You Doing for Preparedness?’ – a question that was then being asked as the United States was considering the consequences of entering World War I. The design also featured in an advertisement in Leslie’s a week later on 13th July when it was used to promote the sale of a multi-volume set of books entitled The Great Republic: An Illustrated History of the American People, priced at $1.97.68
Flagg used Uncle Sam in various guises in further issues of Leslie’s, notably on the cover of 15th February 1917 (see image, across), which featured the image closely relating to Flagg’s recruitment poster and this time bearing the slogan ‘I Want You’. The image was again featured on the cover of 29th December 1917, this time in a parody depicting Uncle Sam holding a pistol and featuring the strapline ‘Get Off That Throne’.
Leslie’s magazine cover featuring Uncle Sam (Priv.)
In John W. Coffey II’s catalogue of ‘American Posters of World War One’, produced for the exhibition at Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts (3rd – 27th April 1978), he identified Flagg as a sincere patriot. Coffey noted that ‘he executed forty-six posters for various war agencies and organisations’. They included the popular design WAKE UP AMERICA DAY of 19th April 1917, and the most successful of all: I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY.
Charles Dana Gibson (LoC)
In 1917, Flagg was appointed State Military Artist of New York. He was part of the first Civilian Preparedness Committee, chaired by Grosvenor Clarkson, and he also joined the Division of Pictorial Publicity (DPP), which was the organisation that accepted Flagg’s Uncle Sam poster design.69
The DPP was chaired by fellow artist and illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, famous for his ‘Gibson Girls’ that were tall and slender, yet with ample bosom, hips and bottom. He was, before Flagg, the highest earning illustrator in the USA. A former student at the Arts Students League, he contributed illustrations to Life magazine for more than thirty years and became editor and owner of the magazine in 1918. He also produced designs for Collier’s, Harper’s Weekly and Scribner’s. Gibson was a prudent choice to head up the DPP as he had the patience and people management skills that Flagg lacked.
The DPP reported to the Committee on Public Information (CPI), formally established by President Woodrow Wilson on 13th April 1917 and chaired by George Creel, who was an established, although progressive, journalist who had worked on the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, and who had supported Wilson’s election. In 1920, Creel wrote about his wartime experiences in How We Advertised America: the first telling of the amazing story of the Committee on public information that carried the gospel of Americanism to every corner of the globe (Harper & Brothers, New York), in which the operations, departments and achievements of the DPP were outlined.70
Divisions were created within the CPI focusing on ‘Advertising’, ‘Films’, ‘News’, ‘Speaking’ and ‘Women’s War Work’, among others. There was a Bureau of Cartoons ‘to direct the scattered cartoon power of the country for war work’. Creel was dubious about its creation, but approved it and was delighted with its success under George J. Hecht. The principal activity was the publication of the Bulletin for Cartoonists.
Regarding censorship and propaganda, Creel wrote: ‘In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and press. In all things, from first to last, without halt or change, it was a plain publicity proposition, a vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world’s greatest adventures in advertising… We did not call it propaganda, for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption. Our effort was educational and informative throughout, for we had such confidence in our case as to feel that no other argument was needed than the simple, straightforward presentation of the facts.’71
Women’s Land Army of America poster (LoC)
Poster by Joseph Pierre Nuyttens (LoC)
Creel ensured that posters played a prominent role throughout the war, although initially he had only wanted Charles Gibson to bring together the New York-based Society of Illustrators to appoint a loosely organised committee of artists to help government agencies with their publicity campaigns. However, this was developed, enlarged and formalised into an active department.
Gibson and Flagg were founder members of the Society of Illustrators in 1901, and
Gibson was its president during the war years. The aim of the Society was ‘to promote generally the art of illustration and to hold exhibitions from time to time’. In addition to Gibson and Flagg, the first monthly dinners were attended by the likes of Howard Chandler Christy, Maxfield Parrish, Howard Pyle, Frederick Remington and N.C. Wyeth. Exhibitions were held in many prominent galleries in New York and meetings in various bars, clubs and restaurants as a permanent members’ building was not acquired until the 1930s.
Creel recalled in How We Advertised America… that ‘What we wanted, what we had to have were posters that represented the best work of the best artists, posters into which the master of the pen and brush had poured heart and soul as well as genius. Looking the field over we decided upon Charles Dana Gibson as the best man to lead the army of artists and on April 17th this splendid American entered as a volunteer [all the artists were unpaid volunteers].’ Creel called F. De Sales Casey his ‘right hand as vice-chairman and secretary’, and the two formed committees.72
Flagg almost certainly first became familiar with Alfred Leete’s Kitchener cartoon through the Society of Illustrators. The society (i.e. designated senior members) would have acquired a wide range of magazines for members’ use, and no doubt when the latest issues arrived there would have been heated discussion and debate on the individual merits of their European counterparts. Of course, Flagg may well have purchased European magazines for his exclusive use. In the early years of the Society of Illustrators – before a permanent building and professional administration – the society and its membership was essentially one and the same thing.73
The London Opinion ‘BRITONS – WANTS YOU’ poster was sent to parts of the British Empire, so of course that excluded the USA. To date, no wartime sightings of that poster or the David Allen and Sons variant have been traced anywhere in the USA, although it is known that some PRC posters were sent.
Writing in the New York Times, Gibson described the operations of the DPP: ‘We have a meeting every Friday night. This takes place at our headquarters, 200 Fifth Avenue, where we meet men who are sent to us with their requests by the different departments in Washington. The meeting is adjourned to Keen’s Chop House [later when the numbers increased it changed to the Salmagundi Club], where we have dinner.’ Two artists were then put forward to execute the project and they were placed either side of the ‘official emissary’ at dinner and views were exchanged until ‘we come to understand one another pretty thoroughly’. The Division invited visiting speakers to contribute their views, and notable among them from Europe was Captain Bruce Bairnsfather.74
Flagg’s talents were recognised although his reputation precluded him from long-standing committees and he was not mentioned by name in Creel’s memoirs. As Walton Rawls noted in Wake Up, America! World War I and The American Poster (Abbeville Press, New York, 1988), ‘The muster roll of the Division of the Pictorial Publicity contained the names of 279 artists and 33 cartoonists. Among them were such well known painters as George Bellows, Edwin H. Blashfield, Kenyon Cox, Arthur G. Dove, William Glackens, F. Luis Mora, Joseph Pennell, Henry Reuterdahl, Frank E. Schoonover, Albert Sterner and N.C. Wyeth.’
And ‘Of course the roster included the famous illustrators Howard Chandler Christy, Harrison Fisher, James Montgomery Flagg, Charles Dana Gibson, John Held Jr., Rea Irvin, Francis and Joseph Leyendecker, Edward Penfield, Coles Phillips and Jessie Wilcox Smith. In addition there were those whose work for the Division would help in making them famous: L.N. Britton, Charles Livingston Bull, Dean Cornwell, Havery T. Morgan, Herbert Paus, Henry Raleigh, William A. Rogers, John E. Sheridan, Adolph Treidler and Ellsworth Young. The names of numerous other well-known artists are linked to familiar World War I posters, but their work was done under the auspices of other organizations, including various art schools.’
One of Howard Chandler Christy’s ‘Christy Girls’ (LoC)
The US Navy arranged its own pictorial publicity independently through the Navy Recruiting Bureau under Captain K.M. Bennett and later Lieutenant Commander O.F. Cooper. Although Lieutenant Henry Reuterdahl was an adviser to the Navy, he also served on Gibson’s executive committee. Many of the artists also worked for the DPP, although as Rawls recorded, there were notable exceptions in that the Navy also used European artists such as Frank Brangwyn and the Dutchman Louis Raemaekers, who produced some of the most aggressive and provocative poster images of the war. Some were issued in the ‘Baron Collier Series of Patriotic Cartoons’, which had originally been published in The Century magazine. The German government offered a reward of 12,000 guilders for Raemaekers, dead or alive.75
It is interesting to note that Flagg was only one of around 280 artists but it is the I WANT YOU FOR U.S. ARMY poster featuring Uncle Sam that is recalled today as the dominant recruitment design.76
Flagg’s Uncle Sam creation was adapted with varying degrees of success by other artists. His slogan was also sometimes effectively used, notably in the work of Howard Chandler Christy (1873–1952). Christy was one of the most celebrated illustrators who glamorised war. He had fought himself during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and became famous for his ‘Christy Girls’. His portrayal of women was provocative for the period and was almost certainly inspired by the designs of Winifred Wimbush, the English artist who produced propaganda postcards with titles such as ‘A Call to Arms’ that depicted women dressed up in military uniforms. The ‘Christy Girls’ featured alongside slogans such as ‘I Want You for The Navy’ and ‘Gee!! I Wish I Were A Man – I’d Join The Navy’.
Poster by C.R. Macauley, 1917 (LoC)
Recruitment poster for the US Navy (LoC)
In Graphic Design: A New History (Laurence King Publishing, London, 2012), the American art historian Stephen J. Eskilson noted that ‘Christy was extremely adept at balancing fresh-faced wholesomeness with just the right amount of giggling sexual availability… The young woman’s plunging neckline and the possibility that she is “playing dress-up” in a Navy man’s uniform are both sexually suggestive. The poster implies that the sexual availability of young women is part of naval service. At the same time, the suggestion that a girlish young woman is willing to join the Navy while men stand aside invokes the manipulative emasculation that was part of many British posters.’
Navy recruitment poster by Flagg (LoC)
Rawls summed up the remarkable achievement of the Division of Pictorial Publicity during its period of operation from April 1917 to November 1918: ‘the DPP submitted seven hundred poster designs to fifty-eight separate government departments and patriotic committees requesting artwork. In addition it produced 122 car, bus, and store-window cards, 310 advertisements, 287 cartoons, and 19 seals, buttons, and banners. The major recipients of the Division’s work were the American Red Cross, War Savings Stamps, the Liberty Loans, the Shipping Board-Emergency Fleet Corporation, the War Camp Community Service, the food, fuel, and railroad administrations, and the Division of Films. For the military proper, the Division prepared eighteen posters for the Ordnance Department, four for the Signal Corps, one for the aviation branch, one for the Tank Corps, and five for the Marine Corps.’77
Navy recruitment poster by Flagg (LoC)
Flagg produced work featuring his Uncle Sam character for many of these departments but his best-known poster remains the army version deriving from his covers for Leslie’s magazine. Susan Meyer claimed that Flagg’s poster was so successful that ‘he stopped attending the weekly meetings [of the DPP]. He said himself: “I became horribly bored with rising toasts.”’ He continued to be a member of the group but worked alone. Like Leete, Flagg frequented clubs and he accepted numerous requests to provide artwork and posters for the Dutch Treat Club, the Lambs Club, Lotos Club, Players Club and the Artists and Writers Club.
The popularity of Flagg’s poster helped to rally men to active service, but there was also a belief fostered by President Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Movement that the war offered the opportunity for the USA to ‘bri
ng reform and democracy to the world’, and this also played a part in encouraging men to enlist.
Satirical cartoon by Flagg (Priv.)
Poster featuring General John J. Pershing (LoC)
More than four million men were mobilised and the American troops were enthusiastically welcomed by Allied armies at the Front in 1918. They arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day, at a time when the Germans were unable to replace their losses. The Americans played a prominent role in the Allied final offensive and victory was eventually achieved on 11th November 1918 after German morale had collapsed on both the Western and Home Fronts. The personal sacrifice of American servicemen was also great. Official statistics reveal 116,516 deaths and 204,000 wounded – a monumental loss of life, when added to the rest of the Allies’, and the British death toll of more than 880,000 men.
Kinstler has said of his late friend and fellow artist: ‘Regrettably, he is barely known today. Known as Monty to his friends, he was classically trained, drew and painted from life. He was very outspoken about the modern art of his day. Regrettably, he became quite frustrated and bitter during his last years, In addition, his sight failed and he was unable to paint. Monty was like some great actor, who couldn’t get roles, and was almost forgotten. His unique wit and humor all too often turned sarcastic.’78
