Cornwell's Backgrounds

Dean Cornwell (American, 1892-1960) painted illustrations with solid, memorable backgrounds, which attracted favorable reviews from journalists of his day.

 

A writer for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle said: "no carelessly sketched-in backgrounds here, flimsy and unstable, a mere set for the figures, upon which the ordinary illustrator concentrates his efforts because he considers they tell the whole story."  

Cornwell would visualize the backgrounds in terms of how he would build them with his own hands, and he recognized the value of knowledge gained through the hands.

Here's how Cornwell put it: "I construct my backgrounds in my mind just as if I were actually building them with bricks and mortar. I follow the same mental processes as does the builder himself." 

Cornwell, a grand-student of golden age illustration teacher Howard Pyle, regarded the art of painting as an natural extension of the manual work of a bricklayer or a carpenter. 

He said: "It has always been a theory of mine that an illustrator must know how to use his hands other than in painting and drawing; he should understand carpentry and building. Howard Pyle used to tell his pupils that they should consider their brains the superior and certainly the equal of those possessed by the men who built the structures he is illustrating."