William Fulton Soare:

Action & Adventure

Among William Soare's largest markets were boys' periodicals, such as Boys' Life and American Boy, and  pulp fiction, such as Adventure magazine, featuring swashbuckling tales of derring-do, in romantic settings: medieval knight-errantry, the high seas in the age of exploration, the old west....
 

	"At the present time I am painting pictures of old ships when they represented the greatest Romance and adventure that man could experience. Gorgeous  barques they were of red and gold, with billowing  sails and streaming pennants.  Looming up into the great pure sky, the source of all variable winds and clouds, even the azure and emerald waves became a moving, living spirit, a universe of danger and daring, and the promise of wealth in golden sunset."  The "Viking Warship" was the cover of  American Boy magazine in September, 1934.
	The anchor heaves!  The ship swings free! Our sails swell full!  To sea! To sea!
	All this helps me to paint a better picture,  refreshes my enthusiasm, and gets me  as far away from the prosaic as possible.  That is something we should never be,  prosaic, because a picture should be a  glorified reality.  Would that such ships were a glorious reality and that you and  I might meet and sail together into a  glamorous adventure!"                                               Jan 20, 1931

	"With all the excitement about the Far East conflict, it certainly keeps me jumping to keep abreast of the daily news, listen in to reports of the Geneva Peace Conference, attend to Artist Guild matters, do some work for a living, and still have time for arguments about this country's lamentably weak and provincial attitude toward cooperation in world affairs.
I even am radical enough to believe if the United States had been  a full member of the League of Nations, the present lawless aggression of Japan could have been averted....		We have too  many small minded  senators, and I was born a little too  soon. I doubt if  this country is able to see for many years to come beyond its own petty commercialism to its duty in the  family of nations." February 5, 1932
The illustrator is a story-teller. "Eastern Intrigue" (above) and "Western Prospect" (right) are good examples of this narrative quality in painting.		William Soare's  action and adventure illustrations displayed below range from finished oil paintings to very rough preliminary sketches, some even  in wax crayons. Their common denominator is their dynamic energy and sense of movement.

The two works above as well as these on either side are acquisitions from  my cousin,  Warren Soare.

 The three panels above show the evolution of a cover for Adventure magazine. This publication was one of the artist's best markets for action & adventure subjects. Over 200 uncatalogued pencil sketches of this type are in the collection, many of them apparently roughs for proposed Adventure covers.  Just a sample is shown here: