Coles Phillips
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist and illustrator, who after 1911 used Coles Phillips as his signature. He is known for his stylish images of women.
Early life
He was born in Springfield, OhioSpringfield, Ohio
Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River, Buck Creek and Beaver Creek, approximately west of Columbus and northeast of Dayton. Springfield is home to Wittenberg...
. From 1902 to 1904, he attended Kenyon College
Kenyon College
Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio, founded in 1824 by Bishop Philander Chase of The Episcopal Church, in parallel with the Bexley Hall seminary. It is the oldest private college in Ohio...
in his native state, where his illustrations were published in the 1901–1904 editions of the school's yearbook, The Reveille. After leaving Kenyon, Phillips moved to Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
, determined to earn a living through his art. He took night classes for three months at the Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
School of Art—his only formal artistic training—before establishing his own advertising agency. One of Phillips' employees was a young Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...
, his former classmate. In 1907, Phillips met with J. A. Mitchell, the publisher of Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
magazine, and was hired onto its staff at the age of twenty-six. Phillips would be associated with the magazine throughout his life.
Career
The work of Phillips quickly became popular with Lifes readers. In May 1908, he created a cover for the magazine that featured his first "fadeaway girl": a figure whose clothing matched, and disappeared into, the background. Phillips developed this idea in many subsequent covers. In the 1910 example of his work displayed to the right, portions of the figure's skirt merge seamlessly with the background, yet the edge of the skirt remains easily defined by the viewer.Phillips' use of negative space
Negative space
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject of an image. Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, and not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space is occasionally used to artistic effect as the "real"...
allowed the viewer to "fill-in" the image; it also reduced printing costs for the magazine, as "the novelty of the technique and the striking design qualities masked the fact that Life was getting by with single color or two-color covers in a day when full-color covers were de rigueur for the better magazines". Phillips worked in watercolor and always painted from life; according to his biographer, Michael Schau, "he refused to work from photographs or to use the pantograph
Pantograph
A pantograph is a mechanical linkage connected in a special manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen...
". His most frequent model in his early years was Teresa Hyde, a nurse whom he met in December 1907 and married in early 1910.
Phillips produced cover art for other national magazines besides Life, including Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping
Good Housekeeping is a women's magazine owned by the Hearst Corporation, featuring articles about women's interests, product testing by The Good Housekeeping Institute, recipes, diet, health as well as literary articles. It is well known for the "Good Housekeeping Seal," popularly known as the...
, which for two years (beginning in July 1912) made him their sole cover artist. Phillips also created many advertising images for makers of women's clothing, and for such clients as the Overland
Overland Automobile
-History:The Overland Automobile "runabout" was founded by Claude Cox, a graduate of Rose Polytechnic Institute, while he was employed by Standard Wheel Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, in 1903. In 1905, Standard Wheel allowed Cox to relocate the Overland Automobile Company to Indianapolis,...
automobile company and Oneida Community
Oneida Limited
Oneida Limited is one of the world's largest marketers of stainless steel flatware, and offers a range of tabletop products. Its operations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Australia market stainless, silverplated, and sterling flatware products, china dinnerware, and...
flatware. His series depicting women wearing Holeproof Hosiery
Holeproof Hosiery
Holeproof Hosiery was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin firm founded in 1901. The business was built primarily through earnings which were left toaggregate in the company. Its advertising expenses exceeded $500,000 after 1901, making it a brand name recognized worldwide. The business produced men's and...
products was considered daring for its time. Phillips' works also appear in the 1921 and 1922 editions of the U. S. Naval Academy yearbook, Lucky Bag
Lucky bag
A Lucky Bag is the term for the United States Naval Academy 'year book' dedicated to the graduating classes. A traditional Lucky Bag has a collection of photos taken around the academy and photographs of each graduating officer along with a single paragraph describing the individual written by a...
.
From 1905 until his death, Phillips lived and worked in New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state.The town was settled by refugee Huguenots in 1688 who were fleeing persecution in France...
. His work habits were regular; his other activities included raising pigeons, a hobby he had pursued since he was eight years old.
In 1924 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
of the kidney, and he was frequently ill thereafter. In January 1927, when problems with his eyesight made painting difficult, he dedicated himself to writing. Phillips died in New Rochelle of his kidney ailment on June 13, 1927, at the age of 47.