Saturday, December 10, 2022

correction of misattribution of magazine cover image

So at last the mystery has been solved. In September 2017, we blogged about an illustration of a dazzle-camouflaged ship that was published on the cover of the December 1918 issue of Sunset: The Pacific Monthly. It's quite a stunning image, and the magazine lists the artist as Harold von Schmidt, which we at first accepted as fact. But we began to have second thoughts, because if you look closely at the lower left corner, the artist has signed the painting as "Bull," not "von Schmidt." So, in the earlier post, we listed the names of both artists. 

As of yesterday, we have resolved the misattribution. The magazine was in error when it listed Von Schmidt as the artist. Instead it was the work of Charles Livingston Bull (1874-1932). In the process of reading the text of a von Schmidt exhibition catalog (John M. Carroll, Von Schmidt: The Complete Illustrator. Fort Collins CO: Old Army Press, 1973), we ran across the following note—

"Sunset Magazine December 1918, Cover: 'His Imperial Majesty's Peace Ship Camouflage!' (This picture is in dispute. Although the artist claims he did not do the painting, the magazine issue gives him credit for having done it.)"