EXTRACTS: Illustrators Issue 5 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

79 Eyles married in his twenties, and in 1929, his son John was born. John also exhibited artistic leanings but pursued a career in teaching, eventually marrying an Italian and moving to Italy, where he died at the early age of forty-eight as a result of an unsuccessful kidney operation. All through the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, Eyles contributed illustrations and book covers for novels, annuals and story papers. He worked for a myriad of different publishers, and it would be a most daunting task not only to list all the books he illustrated, but all the publishers for whom he worked. Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Eyles painted innumerable covers for novels featuring tales of his beloved American West and, even as late as 1951, he was painting covers for Pearson’s Western Novels. In contrast to the pulp covers which he saved as reference, there is a certain gentility to be found in his work that lends a more romantic glow to it than that found in the US pulps. His superbly drawn horses tend to look more like ABOVE LEFT: A painting by Eyles published in the Knockout Fun Book 1951 , depicts Kit Carson pursued by some particularly irascible “injuns”. ABOVE: A very early Eyles illustration, from Chums in the 1920s, reveals a much more impressionistic approach to his painting. Courtesy of Look and Learn