Orson Lowell biography

Orson Byron Lowell (22 December 1871 - 1956; Wyoming, Iowa)

Orson Lowell was an American artist and illustrator of covers and interiors for leading magazines.

Born in Wyoming, Iowa, Lowell was the son of landscapist Milton H. Lowell. He was 11 years old when his family moved in 1882 to Chicago. Lowell attended public school in Chicago until 1887, when he began taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with J.H. Vanderpoel and Oliver Dennett Grover.

In November 1893, Lowell moved to New York City to build his career. By 1905, his work was in high enough demand to allow him to buy a house in New Rochelle, New York while maintaining his studio in New York. New Rochelle came to be a well-known art colony and illustrator's community soon after his arrival. Residents there included Norman Rockwell, Edward Penfield, J. C. Leyendecker, Franklin Booth and Coles Phillips.

By 1907, he became known for his cartoons with a social message published in the humor magazine Life. A contemporary of illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, Lowell illustrated for major magazines, including American Girl, Century, Cosmopolitan, The Delineator, Judge, Ladies' Home Journal, Leslie's Weekly, McCall's, McClure's, Metropolitan Life, Puck, The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner's, Redbook, Vogue and Woman's Home Companion.

Lowell was a very social individual, joined most of the arts clubs in New York and held positions in many of them. Among these were the Players Club, the Society of Illustrators (where he was among the first group of non-founding members), the Guild of Free Lance Artists (where he served as president 1924-25), the New Rochelle Art Association and the New Rochelle Public Library, where he was a trustee from 1930 until 1944.

Lowell's impact, at least from the 1890s through 1920, is difficult to overstate. Shortly after the artist's death in 1956, The New York Times ran an article about the discovery of many of his works from the early 1900s. In the article, the former president of the New Rochelle Art Association, Fell Sharp said, “Mr. Lowell did for American society what Frederick Remington did for the Southwest and Toulouse-Lautrec did for the music halls of Paris. He was an artist with a reporter's nose for a good story”.

Today, more than 50 years after his death and a full century after he had established himself as a talented, successful illustrator, a careful inspection of Lowell's originals show a verve and self-assurance rarely seen before or since. In recent decades it seems to have become increasingly tempting to compare him to the mighty Charles Dana Gibson.

While Lowell did follow Gibson at Life, the depth and appeal of Lowell's work carry far beyond a simplistically-viewed subject matter. Yet, reading the accounts of the time, he had a devoted following and a unique position during his tenure, quite separate from Gibson's impact on the world of popular American art -- Frederic B. Taraba