John Alan Maxwell
Encyclopedia
John Alan Maxwell was an American
artist known primarily for his book and magazine illustrations, as well as historical paintings. He also was an illustrator
for many commercial publications, including Collier's Weekly
, The Saturday Evening Post
, The Golden Book Magazine, The American Magazine, and Woman's Home Companion
.
and raised in Johnson City, Tennessee
, at 430 West Locust Street, the son of Arthur Clifford Maxwell and Bessie Mae (Ball) Maxwell. He was the oldest of five children, including Elizabeth Victoria Maxwell (Smedberg), Clifford Arthur Maxwell, Gladys Virginia Maxwell (McDaniel), and Julia Reeve Maxwell (Croasdell).
Maxwell worked as a soda jerk
in a drug store while attending Science Hill High School
in Johnson City. At 16, he enrolled at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C.
He continued his studies at the Art Students League of New York
, where he studied under painter George Luks
, a member of the Ashcan School
of early twentieth-century American artists who often painted pictures of New York city life. One of his other teachers was noted book and magazine illustrator Frank Vincent DuMond, whose students also included Georgia O'Keeffe
and Norman Rockwell
.
. The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt
, was erected and opened in 1858 by James Boorman Johnston (1822–1887), whose brother, John Taylor Johnston
, became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
a few years later. The Tenth Street Studio Building
at 51 West Tenth Street in New York was home to “artist entrepreneurs” for 98 years—artists from the Hudson River School
to the American Impressionists—including such famous artists as Frederick E. Church, Albert Bierstadt
, Winslow Homer
, Sanford R. Gifford, John La Farge and William Merritt Chase
. The previous occupant of Maxwell’s studio was the Lebanese artist, poet, and writer Kahlil Gibran.
By the early 1930s, Maxwell was illustrating for such noted writers as Christopher Morley
, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Pearl S. Buck
and Edna Ferber
.
His illustrations for Aldous Huxley
's first novel, Sir Hercules and Lady Filomena, appeared in the April, 1931 issue of Golden Book magazine, the same year Huxley was writing Brave New World
. His erotic drawings enhance Le Sage's Asmodeus, or The Devil on Two Sticks published in 1932 by the Bibliophilist Society.
In 1936, according to his 1984 obituary in the Johnson City Press Chronicle, he won first place in the Society of Illustrators competition in New York—and was named one of the top 10 illustrators in the country. A prolific illustrator, other authors for whom he illustrated include John Steinbeck
, Joseph Conrad
, F. Van Wyck Mason
, Allan Eckert, Frank Yerby
, James Street
, Booth Tarkington
, Frank Slaughter, and Thomas Costain. He maintained his studio at the Tenth Street Studio until it was demolished in 1956. Maxwell returned to Johnson City shortly thereafter, and continued to work at his studio at 428 West Locust Street until his death in 1984.
He is also credited by a vendor on eBay with an illustration for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was used for the Broadway play. The vendor states that they sold the painting.
in New York. He was described in a 1947 profile in American Artist magazine as the quintessential "illustrator of romance."
Maxwell illustrated multiple books and magazine serials for Pearl S. Buck
for over a decade, including the portrait of the author’s mother for the cover of the 1935 book, The Exile, and the companion portrait of her father for the cover of her 1936 book, Fighting Angel in addition to his illustrations of the serialized editions of these two books in Woman's Home Companion from 1935-1937. Mrs. Buck was the first American woman to be awarded both the Pulitzer Prize
(1932) and Nobel Prize
(1938) for literature, and these book illustrations are encased along with Buck's Nobel Prize in a glass case at the Green Hills Farm
in Perkasie, Pennsylvania
.
For the Doubleday Doran & Company, Maxwell illustrated a 1929 United States edition of The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel
by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
, the British novelist, playwright and artist.
In a profile of Maxwell in the February, 1948 issue of Esquire Magazine, writer Robert U. Godsoe described the artist (5 excerpted paragraphs below):
Maxwell was a contemporary of N.C. Wyeth, an important 20th century illustrator, and better known. Maxwell and Wyeth each illustrated five novels for Rafael Sabatini
. Wyeth and Maxwell also both illustrated works for C. S. Forester
's popular Horatio Hornblower
series. Maxwell illustrated the dust jacket for the 1933 first edition of Hervey Allen
's Anthony Adverse
, followed by Wyeth's illustration of a 1934 edition of the same book. Both editions featured interior decorations by Allan McNab. Maxwell's 1933 dust jacket illustration re-appears as an embossed duotone on a bookbound edition of Anthony Adverse
in 1936. This same illustration also appears on a 1933 wooden Arteno "Picture Puzzle" in full color. Wyeth and Maxwell both illustrated books for Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the authors of Mutiny on the Bounty (Wyeth) and No More Gas (Maxwell). No More Gas originally appeared in a c. 1939 Saturday Evening Post as Out of Gas. Today, Maxwell's original Alan Eckert illustrations also adorn recent reprint editions of Allan Eckert's novels, including THE FRONTIERSMEN, WILDERNESS EMPIRE and THE CONQUERORS. Maxwell was still illustrating books for Eckert when he died in 1984.
While distinctions between artists and illustrators have not always favored the quiet work of the 20th century book and magazine illustrator, John Alan Maxwell was recognized in 1936 as one of the top ten illustrators in the country by the Society of Illustrators. Today his body of work, as reflected by the authors for whom he illustrated—can only be described as prolific and important—if Buck, Steinbeck, and the other authors he represented can be so described.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
artist known primarily for his book and magazine illustrations, as well as historical paintings. He also was an illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
for many commercial publications, including Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
, The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
, The Golden Book Magazine, The American Magazine, and Woman's Home Companion
Woman's Home Companion
Woman's Home Companion was an American monthly publication, published from 1873 to 1957. It was highly successful, climbing to a circulation peak of more than four million during the 1930s and 1940s....
.
Early years and education
Maxwell was born in Roanoke, VirginiaRoanoke, Virginia
Roanoke is an independent city in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. state of Virginia and is the tenth-largest city in the Commonwealth. It is located in the Roanoke Valley of the Roanoke Region of Virginia. The population within the city limits was 97,032 as of 2010...
and raised in Johnson City, Tennessee
Johnson City, Tennessee
Johnson City is a city in Carter, Sullivan, and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, with most of the city being in Washington County...
, at 430 West Locust Street, the son of Arthur Clifford Maxwell and Bessie Mae (Ball) Maxwell. He was the oldest of five children, including Elizabeth Victoria Maxwell (Smedberg), Clifford Arthur Maxwell, Gladys Virginia Maxwell (McDaniel), and Julia Reeve Maxwell (Croasdell).
Maxwell worked as a soda jerk
Soda jerk
A soda jerk was a person — typically a youth — who operated the soda fountain in a drugstore, often for the purpose of preparing and serving ice cream soda. This was made by putting flavored syrup into a specially designed tall glass, adding carbonated water and, finally, one or two scoops of ice...
in a drug store while attending Science Hill High School
Science Hill High School
Science Hill High School is a high school in Johnson City, Tennessee with an enrollment of approximately 2600 students. The school is split over three campuses: 9-12 Campus, Technical Center Campus, & Alternative School Campus. The school also shares space with Freedom Hall Civic Center...
in Johnson City. At 16, he enrolled at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
He continued his studies at the Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
, where he studied under painter George Luks
George Luks
George Benjamin Luks, was an American realist artist and illustrator. His vigorously painted genre paintings of urban subjects are examples of the Ashcan school in American art.-Early life:...
, a member of the Ashcan School
Ashcan School
The Ashcan School, also called the Ash Can School, is defined as a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. The movement grew out of a group...
of early twentieth-century American artists who often painted pictures of New York city life. One of his other teachers was noted book and magazine illustrator Frank Vincent DuMond, whose students also included Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia O'Keeffe
Georgia Totto O'Keeffe was an American artist.Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O'Keeffe first came to the attention of the New York art community in 1916, several decades before women had gained access to art training in America’s colleges and universities, and before any of its women artists...
and Norman Rockwell
Norman Rockwell
Norman Percevel Rockwell was a 20th-century American painter and illustrator. His works enjoy a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening...
.
Artistic career
By 1925, at the age of 21, Maxwell was illustrating for Collier’s and Golden Book magazines and had established a studio at the famous Tenth Street Studio BuildingTenth Street Studio Building
The Tenth Street Studio Building, constructed in New York City in 1857, was the first modern facility designed solely to serve the needs of artists...
. The building, designed by Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt
Richard Morris Hunt was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture...
, was erected and opened in 1858 by James Boorman Johnston (1822–1887), whose brother, John Taylor Johnston
John Taylor Johnston
John Taylor Johnston was born on April 8, 1820, the son of John Johnston, a prominent merchant banker in New York City. Johnston was the founding president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1870, as well as the President of the Central Railroad of New Jersey from 1848 to 1877...
, became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
a few years later. The Tenth Street Studio Building
Tenth Street Studio Building
The Tenth Street Studio Building, constructed in New York City in 1857, was the first modern facility designed solely to serve the needs of artists...
at 51 West Tenth Street in New York was home to “artist entrepreneurs” for 98 years—artists from the Hudson River School
Hudson River school
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism...
to the American Impressionists—including such famous artists as Frederick E. Church, Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion...
, Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....
, Sanford R. Gifford, John La Farge and William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
. The previous occupant of Maxwell’s studio was the Lebanese artist, poet, and writer Kahlil Gibran.
By the early 1930s, Maxwell was illustrating for such noted writers as Christopher Morley
Christopher Morley
Christopher Morley was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.-Biography:Christopher Morley was born in Haverford, Pennsylvania...
, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...
and Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
.
His illustrations for Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
's first novel, Sir Hercules and Lady Filomena, appeared in the April, 1931 issue of Golden Book magazine, the same year Huxley was writing Brave New World
Brave New World
Brave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
. His erotic drawings enhance Le Sage's Asmodeus, or The Devil on Two Sticks published in 1932 by the Bibliophilist Society.
In 1936, according to his 1984 obituary in the Johnson City Press Chronicle, he won first place in the Society of Illustrators competition in New York—and was named one of the top 10 illustrators in the country. A prolific illustrator, other authors for whom he illustrated include John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
, Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
, F. Van Wyck Mason
F. Van Wyck Mason
Francis Van Wyck Mason was an American historian and novelist. He had a long and prolific career as a writer spanning 50 years and including 78 published novels, many of which were best sellers and well received.- Life :Van Wyck Mason was born to a patrician Boston family which traced its roots...
, Allan Eckert, Frank Yerby
Frank Yerby
Frank Garvin Yerby was an African American historical novelist. He is best known as the first African American writer to become a millionaire from his pen, and to have a book purchased by a Hollywood studio for a film adaptation.-Early life:...
, James Street
James H. Street
James Howell Street was a U.S. journalist, minister, and writer of Southern historical novels.Street was born in Lumberton, Mississippi, in 1903. As a teenager, he began working as a journalist for newspapers in Laurel and Hattiesburg, Mississippi...
, Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams...
, Frank Slaughter, and Thomas Costain. He maintained his studio at the Tenth Street Studio until it was demolished in 1956. Maxwell returned to Johnson City shortly thereafter, and continued to work at his studio at 428 West Locust Street until his death in 1984.
He is also credited by a vendor on eBay with an illustration for Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, which was used for the Broadway play. The vendor states that they sold the painting.
Significance
John Alan Maxwell was named one of the top ten illustrators in the country in 1936 by the Society of IllustratorsSociety of Illustrators
The Society of Illustrators is a professional society based in New York City. Founded in 1901, the mission of the Society is to promote the art and appreciation of illustration, as well as its history...
in New York. He was described in a 1947 profile in American Artist magazine as the quintessential "illustrator of romance."
Maxwell illustrated multiple books and magazine serials for Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932...
for over a decade, including the portrait of the author’s mother for the cover of the 1935 book, The Exile, and the companion portrait of her father for the cover of her 1936 book, Fighting Angel in addition to his illustrations of the serialized editions of these two books in Woman's Home Companion from 1935-1937. Mrs. Buck was the first American woman to be awarded both the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
(1932) and Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
(1938) for literature, and these book illustrations are encased along with Buck's Nobel Prize in a glass case at the Green Hills Farm
Green hills farm
Green Hills Farm is the sixty-acre homestead in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where Nobel-prize-winning American author Pearl Buck lived for 40 years, raising her family, writing, pursuing humanitarian interests, and gardening. She purchased the house in 1933 and lived there until the late 1960s, when...
in Perkasie, Pennsylvania
Perkasie, Pennsylvania
Perkasie is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. Establishments in the borough early in the twentieth century included silk mills, baseballs, brickyards, lumber mills, tile works, a stone crusher, and manufacturies of cigars, tags and labels, wire novelties, etc. The...
.
For the Doubleday Doran & Company, Maxwell illustrated a 1929 United States edition of The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel
The Scarlet Pimpernel is a play and adventure novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The story is a precursor to the "disguised superhero" tales such as Zorro and Batman....
by Baroness Emmuska Orczy
Baroness Orczy
Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála "Emmuska" Orczy de Orczi was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian noble origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel...
, the British novelist, playwright and artist.
In a profile of Maxwell in the February, 1948 issue of Esquire Magazine, writer Robert U. Godsoe described the artist (5 excerpted paragraphs below):
"Here is a romantic painter of dangerously exciting women--women with 'great mystery in their hair and moisture on their hands.'"
"John Alan Maxwell, one of today's brightest lights in the illustrating field, yearns for times past, places forgotten, a world most imaginary, popularly supposed to have been pre-Civil WarHistory of the United States (1789–1849)With the election of George Washington as the first president in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national...
DixieDixieDixie is a nickname for the Southern United States.- Origin of the name :According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origins of this nickname remain obscure. According to A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles , by Mitford M...
. The urge is a charming, if sometimes macabre nostalgia."
"That Maxwell should spend his efforts upon a romanticized, literary past is no less legitimate than the preoccupation of a Chirico with long sad vistas in towns that never were. Maxwell is entitled to his moon-drenched graveyards as PoeEdgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
was to his misty mid-regions. The only question we are permitted to ask is, "How far can nostalgia go without becoming the mutterings of an old man in his beer (or his bourbon) who likes to tell you, ad infinitum, about things that have ceased to interest anyone but himself, and himself only because he has nothing better to do?" What we are attempting to say to John Maxwell, then, his neighbor Tom WolfeThomas WolfeThomas Clayton Wolfe was a major American novelist of the early 20th century.Wolfe wrote four lengthy novels, plus many short stories, dramatic works and novellas. He is known for mixing highly original, poetic, rhapsodic, and impressionistic prose with autobiographical writing...
said to him and to FaulknerWilliam FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
and to all the many talents of the modern South. Because you can't ever, really, try as you will, go home again."
"Maxwell, when he loosens the shackles which have married him to the past, has a chance of becoming the painter of the most dangerous nudes in America, as Maillol's nudes are dangerous, because there is, in his concept of the female form, adoration, veneration, desire, the wit of well-being, the promise of enrichment."
"In this day of Mondrian'sPiet MondrianPieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian , was a Dutch painter.He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism...
fiendish austerity, of Moholoy-Nagy'sLászló Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
sometimes bleakly scientific functionalism, of Kandinsky's astral trapezoids, there is a place in art for sheer romance, for flesh over honest bones, for mysteries in hair, for odor and sound."
Maxwell was a contemporary of N.C. Wyeth, an important 20th century illustrator, and better known. Maxwell and Wyeth each illustrated five novels for Rafael Sabatini
Rafael Sabatini
Rafael Sabatini was an Italian/British writer of novels of romance and adventure.-Life:Rafael Sabatini was born in Iesi, Italy, to an English mother and Italian father...
. Wyeth and Maxwell also both illustrated works for C. S. Forester
C. S. Forester
Cecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith , an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen...
's popular Horatio Hornblower
Horatio Hornblower
Horatio Hornblower is a fictional Royal Navy officer who is the protagonist of a series of novels by C. S. Forester. He was later the subject of films and television programs.The original Hornblower tales began with the 1937 novel The Happy Return Horatio Hornblower is a fictional Royal Navy...
series. Maxwell illustrated the dust jacket for the 1933 first edition of Hervey Allen
Hervey Allen
William Hervey Allen was an American author.-Biography:He graduated from University of Pittsburgh in 1915, where he also became a member of the Sigma Chi Fraternity....
's Anthony Adverse
Anthony Adverse
Anthony Adverse is a 1936 American drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Sheridan Gibney is based on the sprawling 1,224-page novel of the same title by Hervey Allen.-Plot:...
, followed by Wyeth's illustration of a 1934 edition of the same book. Both editions featured interior decorations by Allan McNab. Maxwell's 1933 dust jacket illustration re-appears as an embossed duotone on a bookbound edition of Anthony Adverse
Anthony Adverse
Anthony Adverse is a 1936 American drama film directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The screenplay by Sheridan Gibney is based on the sprawling 1,224-page novel of the same title by Hervey Allen.-Plot:...
in 1936. This same illustration also appears on a 1933 wooden Arteno "Picture Puzzle" in full color. Wyeth and Maxwell both illustrated books for Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the authors of Mutiny on the Bounty (Wyeth) and No More Gas (Maxwell). No More Gas originally appeared in a c. 1939 Saturday Evening Post as Out of Gas. Today, Maxwell's original Alan Eckert illustrations also adorn recent reprint editions of Allan Eckert's novels, including THE FRONTIERSMEN, WILDERNESS EMPIRE and THE CONQUERORS. Maxwell was still illustrating books for Eckert when he died in 1984.
While distinctions between artists and illustrators have not always favored the quiet work of the 20th century book and magazine illustrator, John Alan Maxwell was recognized in 1936 as one of the top ten illustrators in the country by the Society of Illustrators. Today his body of work, as reflected by the authors for whom he illustrated—can only be described as prolific and important—if Buck, Steinbeck, and the other authors he represented can be so described.
Partial List of Maxwell's works
- Hopper, James Marie, 1876-1956 Medals of honor, with illustrations by John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; Colliers Aug 13 ’27 Loot • Albert Payson Terhune • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; The Golden Book Magazine Apr ’30
- The Flight to Varennes Part 2 of 4 • Alexandre Dumas; trans. by Richard S. Garnett • sl, 1930; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; The Golden Book Magazine Nov ’30
- Mary, Queen of Scots • Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve • bg (r); illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Cover Artist; The Golden Book Magazine Jul ’35 Golden Book Magazine [v22 #127, July 1935] (Review of ReviewsReview of ReviewsThe Review of Reviews was a noted family of monthly journals founded in 1890-93 by British reform journalist William Thomas Stead...
, 25¢, 128pp, small pulp, cover by John Alan Maxwell); Reprint magazine. [PSP] - Cover Artist; The Golden Book Magazine Aug ’35 Golden Book Magazine [v22 #128, August 1935] (Review of ReviewsReview of ReviewsThe Review of Reviews was a noted family of monthly journals founded in 1890-93 by British reform journalist William Thomas Stead...
, 25¢, 128pp, small pulp, cover by John Alan Maxwell); Partial contents from EBAY auction. - Interior Artwork; Ladies Home Journal Oct ’36 Fair Day • Ruth Burr Sanborn • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; Colliers Aug 1 ’42 The Baltimore Burnt-Eyes • Herbert Ravenel Sass • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; The Country Gentleman Oct ’42 Biography • Will F. Jenkins • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; Woman’s Home Companion Sep ’44 A Curse on Thee, Cordelia • Helen Strass • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; Woman’s Home Companion Aug ’45 A Pair of Wings • Edita Morris • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Interior Artwork; The American Magazine Jan ’48 Flight into Spring • Bianca Bradbury • ss; illus. John Alan Maxwell
- Collier's Magazine December 10, 1927 Edgar Ain't Wuth It a short story by Ernest Poole. Illustrated by John Alan Maxwell.
- Collier's Magazine December 24, 1927 A Way With Women a short story by John B. Kennedy with illustrations by John Alan Maxwell
- Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1957. The gentleman from Indianapolis; a treasury of Booth Tarkington, edited by John Beecroft. Illustrated by John Alan Maxwell