Top Artists of Adventure

As I have been realizing over time, the artists of Adventure magazine are an even more obscure lot than the authors. So I decided to put together an article on them, but realized it was becoming too big. So I broke it into a two part article, with the first part being the top cover artists and the second one covering other notable artists.

The following illustrators together created more than half the covers of Adventure magazine during the time when it was a pulp magazine (1910-1953).  The numbers in brackets are the number of covers which they did.

 

 Hubert Rogers   Hubert Rogers (54)   Prolific artist, painted  adventure and science fiction covers. Many of his covers featured men in profile.	H. C. Murphy (39)   Also illustrated the cover for Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon in Black Mask. Many of his covers depicted boats and cowboys.	Gerard C. Delano  Gerard C. Delano (39)   Probably the most successful of Adventure artists. Painted many themes but his most beautiful ones are the very muted American Indian themed covers, in my opinion.
 Rafael DeSoto   Rafael DeSoto (26)   Another prolific artist who spanned the adventure, detective and western genres. Almost all his covers featured people who never directly looked at the reader, for some reason.	 Colcord Heurlin   Colcord Heurlin (25)   Pioneering Alaskan painter of many northwestern covers, also a bush pilot. Instantly recognizable by his pastel color palette in northwestern scenes.	Peter Sterne Stevens (22)   Did many outstanding cover illustrations for Famous Fantastic Mysteries and other science fiction pulps. Many of his covers feature a man attacking an assailant who is out of the scene.
 A. L. Ripley   A.L. Ripley (21)   Specialized in pirate covers, seems to have been inspired by Howard Pyle. One of his covers features rats leaving a ship.	E. F. Wittmack (19)   Painted many covers for the slicks (The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers’, Popular Science among others) and the pulps. All his covers in Adventure were on marine themes.	 Walter M. Baumhofer   Walter M. Baumhofer (17)   Started his career with Adventure, went on to paint for many magazines (pulps and slicks). Called the King of the Pulps. I really liked his covers featuring a monkey.
Malvin Singer (16)   Illustrated adventure and crime fiction, moved to men’s adventure mags after the pulp era. Many of his covers featured a man shouting.	Stockton Mulford (14)   Did covers under his name and also under the alias “Ray Dean”. No idea why, it’s one of life’s little mysteries.	Dominic Cammerota (11)   Could not find out anything about this artist
James C. McKell (13)   Illustrated adventure and western pulps. All his covers for Adventure are western themes.	V. E. Pyles  V. E. Pyles (11)   Painted the cover for the last pulp issue of Adventure.	 Arthur Schwieder    Arthur Schwieder (11)   Seems to have worked exclusively for Adventure before starting an art school in 1928.
Charles Durant (10)   Could not find out anything about this artist	Charles Livingston Bull  Charles Livingston Bull (10)   The pre-eminent wildlife artist of the time, responsible for many of the most beautiful late teens animal covers. Also did circus posters for Barnum and Bailey and many other books	Maurice Bower (10)   Illustrated many covers for the Saturday Evening Post. Almost all of his covers have a man clutching a weapon.
 William F. Soare   William F. Soare (10)   This artist passed away early at the age of 42. He worked across western, adventure, crime and “spicy” pulps.	 Rockwell Kent   Rockwell Kent (10)   Was the sole artist for the entire time in 1926-27 Adventure tried to become a slick magazine.	Hibberd V. B. Kline (10)   He was a university professor. One of his covers features two hands reaching for a gun and is a masterpiece of minimalism.

 Watch out for part 2 next week. There's lots of interesting stuff there.