J. J. Lankes - Career

Career

In 1914, Lankes married Edee Maria Bartlett. In 1915, his first child was born with three more to follow. Having a wife and family to support, he obtained work as foreman of the drafting room at Newton Arms, a rifle factory in Buffalo. In 1917, using a V-cutting tool intended for cross-hatching grips on gunstocks, and a piece of wood from an apple tree blown down by a storm, he cut his first woodblock titled “Flying Gosling.”

Lankes received his first opportunity as an illustrator in the woodcut medium from Max Eastman, who edited The Liberator. Lankes found many kindred spirits at the Liberator and was even listed on the masthead as a contributing editor. Like many leftists in the early 20th century, his views grew more moderate later on but he continued to have a great disdain for the bourgeoisie and a deep respect for the working class, which is always evident in his art.

It was Lankes' wife's idea to move to Virginia. Lankes would have a love-hate relationship with the American South for the rest of his life but the move proved to be very fruitful for inspiration and new friends and colleagues. In 1930, Lankes and his Hilton Village neighbor Eager Wood of the Virginia Press, collaborated on Virginia Woodcuts, a folio-sized, limited edition volume of 25 prints of rural Virginia scenes.

Lankes wrote and illustrated A Woodcut Manual, published by Henry Holt in 1932. It was written in a very folksy style and well received by the art and literary community, though not a commercial success in its time. In 2006, The University of Tampa published a new edition of this book with selected letters and other writings, edited by Welford Dunaway Taylor.

Lankes wrote a great many letters, collections of which may be found in Buffalo and Erie County Library, Dartmouth College, Amherst (College and town library), Middlebury College, and Wisconsin State Library. A substantial archive of Lankes' writings are with Professor Taylor at the University of Richmond.

In 1933, Lankes was persuaded by Frost to accept a position as visiting Professor at Wells College in Aurora, New York. He taught at Wells for seven years.

In 1940, Harper & Brothers published an edition of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, with thirty woodcut illustrations by Lankes and an introduction by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Robert P. T. Coffin.

Lankes produced 41 woodcut renderings of Pennsylvania Dutch barns, some of which were published in the Journal of the American Insititute of Architects. A book was planned but never published, which was a great source of disappointment to Lankes, who considered these works to be his crowning achievement.