Artistic Career
By 1925, at the age of 21, Maxwell was illustrating for Collier’s and Golden Book magazines and had established a studio at the famous Tenth Street Studio Building. The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, was erected and opened in 1858 by James Boorman Johnston (1822–1887), whose brother, John Taylor Johnston, became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art a few years later. The Tenth Street Studio Building at 51 West Tenth Street in New York was home to “artist entrepreneurs” for 98 years—artists from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists—including such famous artists as Frederick E. Church, Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer, Sanford R. Gifford, John La Farge and William Merritt Chase. The previous occupant of Maxwell’s studio was the Lebanese artist, poet, and writer Kahlil Gibran.
By the early 1930s, Maxwell was illustrating for such noted writers as Christopher Morley, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Pearl S. Buck and Edna Ferber.
His illustrations for Aldous Huxley's first novel, Sir Hercules and Lady Filomena, appeared in the April, 1931 issue of Golden Book magazine, the same year Huxley was writing Brave New World. His erotic drawings enhance Le Sage's Asmodeus, or The Devil on Two Sticks published in 1932 by the Bibliophilist Society.
In 1936, according to his 1984 obituary in the Johnson City Press Chronicle, he won first place in the Society of Illustrators competition in New York—and was named one of the top 10 illustrators in the country. A prolific illustrator, other authors for whom he illustrated include John Steinbeck, Joseph Conrad, F. Van Wyck Mason, Allan Eckert, Frank Yerby, James Street, Booth Tarkington, Frank Slaughter, and Thomas Costain. He maintained his studio at the Tenth Street Studio until it was demolished in 1956. Maxwell returned to Johnson City shortly thereafter, and continued to work at his studio at 428 West Locust Street until his death in 1984.
An illustration signed by Maxwell for the official theater poster for Ernest Hemingway's 1943 film For Whom the Bell Tolls, was sold on eBay in March, 2011.
Read more about this topic: John Alan Maxwell
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