William Fulton Soare:

Documentation

Like all commercial illustrators, William Soare had to produce a large and continuous volume of work to earn a living, some of it of quite a sensational nature.  Movie fan magazines, pulp anthologies of adventure stories of the wild west and other exotic times and places, even rather lurid titillations of violence and horror were his market.  Although I was only an infant when the artist was alive, I remember him as a sensitive and loving father.  Perhaps some of his work was a vicarious expression of the repressed beast within this mild-mannered man!  Especially important buyers of his work were publishers of magazines for boys, as evidenced by the frequency of covers for The American Boy and Boys Life in the display below.

NY Herald Tribune, December 18, 1938 Screen Book, April 1931 NY Herald Tribune, September 11, 1938
Adventure, September 1938 Adventure, September 1939 American Boy, October 1929
American Boy, October 1932 Adventure, July 1938 Adventure, May 1939
American Boy, May 1934 American Boy, December 1930 American Boy, December 1929
American Boy, September 1934 American Boy, July 1930 Boys Life, April 1933
American Boy, January 1935 American Boy, August 1936 Country Gentleman, July 1933
Boys Life, September 1934 Boys Life, April 1935 Boys Life, March 1939
Western Romances, Sept 1934 Ace-High, Dec 18, 1927
High Adventure, modern reproduction
Short Stories, June 10, 1936 Short Stories, July 10, 1938 Short Stories, Sept 25, 1938
Short Stories, March 10, 1937 Short Stories, March 1951
Short Stories, July 1937 Novel, November, 1935 Book jacket, J.B. Lippencott, 1929
Kris presents a treasured gift!

Many of these old magazines have been found on eBay auctions. I would like to thank my daughter-in-law, Kris, for finding them and pointing me further in this direction.  She began buying them for me as gifts, and now keeps me posted whenever she spots one she thinks I may want to bid on.

 Some early acquisitions

Collection of the actual publications has begun only in recent years, and is ongoing.  It is like a detective story (many of  which William Soare also illustrated).  Some of the paintings I have had all my life, and have discovered only now in what venue they were published.  After seven decades, documentation of the artist's work is like assembling  pieces of a puzzle scattered all over the world. In fact,  I learned to my surprise that three of the Washington paintings on the Historical IIlustration  page were published as jigsaw puzzles! I now have those puzzles in my current collection. It is reasonable to assume that the others in the series were printed in this medium as well.
        The Internet has been a great tool in this research.     If anyone out there has a publication with a Soare cover which is not already displayed above, I will pay ten dollars for it.  If you don't wish to part with it, I'd appreciate it very much if you would scan it and e mail it to me.  If it looks good I will be happy to post it on this page!