WILLIAM FULTON SOARE
(1896-1940)
Illustration & Fine Art
Works
SUNLIGHT REFLECTIONS
Studio/Gallery
Carole Yvonne &
Thomas F. Soare,
Ph.D
PO Box 544
Trinity, Texas 75862-0544
Phone: 936/594-9671
Fax: 936/594-9672
Popular
Art of the 1930's
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The last generation of American illustration before the
commercial art marketplace yielded to the new medium of color photography
was very rich, despite desperately poor economic conditions. Having
plunged from the high life of the Roaring 20's to the depths of the Great
Depression, an America standing on bread lines looked to its images of
popular culture for escape from the limitations of present reality.
Glamorous and flamboyantly romantic, the artwork of advertising and
magazines offered nostalgia for bettertimes. But to be competitive in this
market, it had to be rendered with painstaking historical authenticity,
and a command of painterly technique which rivaled that of the masters of
the Renaissance. |
One such competitor, a master of this medium, was William Fulton
Soare.
About the
Artist:
| William Soare was a student of the great masters of
American illustration: Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn, and N.C. Wyeth, the
patriarch of the "Brandywine School." He also studied at the Sorbonne in
Paris following his release from active duty with the American
Expeditionary Forces in 1918. Throughout the 1920's and 1930's he pursued
an active career in illustration art. His output was prodigious:
advertisements, calendars, illustrations, and covers for western,
detective and adventure magazines. Among these were the New York
Herald Tribune, Boys' Life, American Boy, Scribners, Adventure,
and the Saturday Evening Post. |
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From their first meeting on an excursion boat in the summer of
1930 until their wedding in 1935, a prolific and impassioned exchange of letters
took place.
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The correspondents were: my mother, Valdora Joyce
Seissinger: teacher, scholar of English literature, romantic belle of the
remnants of the Old South,--- and my father, William Fulton Soare: artist,
commercial illustrator, sometime idealistic poet, sometime pragmatic
Yankee, and veteran of the First World War. As the Great Depression
postponed the marriage of the Memphis schoolmarm and the New York starving
artist for nearly four years, their flood of letters has left a graphic
record of their life and times. |
This website is a glimpse of the mind of William Soare, revealed
through the words from his pen, juxtaposed with the images from his
paintbrush.
The artist was struck down in the prime of
his creativity by a massive heart attack in February, 1940. He was
shoveling 3' deep snow off his front walk in Englewood, New Jersey, in
anticipation of a visit from a man who was to see him about a cover of
the Saturday Evening Post. |
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Although was he only 43, his death was not altogether
unexpected. His induction into the army in World War I after a 6-month
bout with typhoid fever had left him suffering from a heart murmur.
As he died more than six decades ago on the threshhold of national recognition,
the words and works of William Fulton Soare have yet to be discovered
by the general public.
As I am his only child, I have authored this website to
facilitate that
discovery. |
The primary purpose of this site is archival; to assemble for public view
as many of the works of William Fulton Soare as are known to be in existence. We
have only scratched the surface. For the more than 100 pieces from his
immediate family shown here, there are hundreds more which are unknown to
us. If you should have a painting by William Soare, please share that
information with us. If you will send us a photograph, we will be happy to
put it on this website.
Thomas Fulton Soare
