Cady, Harrison

Cady's Store at Gardner Center, Massachusetts

Inscribed and dated "Cady's store at Gardner Center, Mass./Anno Domini. 1885 (lower Left). 15.25 x 52 inches (39.3 x 132.1 cm), Some damage lower margins. Framed and glazed.

Walter Harrison Cady was born in Gardner, Massachusetts in 1877. His father, a town selectman and proprietor of the general store, was fascinated with a variety of subjects, including the classics of literature, as well as the study of nature. During the course of long walks with his young son, Edwin Cady passed on his love of the local flora and fauna, which was later reflected in the son's art. Tragically, Edwin Cady's business in Gardner failed, and while attempting to earn a living in Boston, he was killed. Walter Harrison was eighteen Even at this early age, Cady had experienced some success by having his illustrations published. In 1894 Walter H. Cady (as he then signed his work) published an illustration in a supplement to Harper's Young People After his father's death he went to New York to find work as a free lance artist, and within a year had obtained a steady job on the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper as an illustrator for $10 a week, which allowed him to support his mother, in a cold water flat in Greenwich Village. For the next four years he worked full time at the Brooklyn Eagle and did creative work on his own, until he attracted the attention of John Ames Mitchell, editor of Life, who offered Cady a job as staff artist and cartoonist, at an excellent salary He also illustrated a variety of articles and provided cover pages for a many popular magazines, including Boy's Life, Saturday Evening Post, Country Gentleman, and Ladies' Home Journal. And, with his hard earned success, he began to sign his work Harrison Cady, leaving behind his first name W. HARRISON CADY (1877-1970), was "a man who saw things that were not there" said editor and owner of the old Life Magazine, John Ames, about this successful illustrator who depicted nature with great fidelity and imagination. Fantasy and friendly animals living in ethereal magical worlds became Cady's trademark and thus prompted his work on hundreds of book and newspaper pages, Old Mother West Wind and Peter Rabbit by Thornton W. Burgess in particular Incredibly detailed crosshatching and shading technique mold realism in Cady's fantastic world. Having received no formal art training, Walter Harrison Cady was introduced to art through an informal apprenticeship with a local painter, Parker Perkins, in his hometown of Gardner Massachusetts. On long hiking trips Cady learned to observe nature and depicted his subjects with that educated eye. Cady's practical art education came as a newspaper artist with the intense on the spot deadline training required by the trade at the turn of the century Cady was very prolific, illustrating for over 70 years for publications such as St. Nicholas, Saturday Evening Post, Ladie's Home Journal, Good Housekeeping and the Herald Tribune Syndicate. From personal and unfettered editorial commentary to depictions of fantasy forest worlds, Harrison Cady's work naturally typifies a distinctly American sensibility. -A.S.M

Item #211429       Price: $8,000.00