The Sundblom School of Illustration: "... its best returns came from the mutual sharing of our various abilities."

In his Haddon Sundblom article on the Illustration House website Roger T. Reed writes, "Sundblom gets pigeonholed as the painter of Coca-Cola Santa Clauses...""... but this trivializes his central place in 20th century advertising art. More than any artist including Norman Rockwell, Sundblom defined the American Dream in pictures, proved by his work for virtually the entire Fortune 500."Often when I'm flipping through the pages of an old mid-century...

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Haddon Sundblom and the Chicago Pin-Up Artists

In the book, The Great American Pin-Up, co-authors Charles Martignette and Louis Meisel credit Haddon Sundblom with being "recognized today as the inspiration behind the best pin-up and glamor artists from the 1930s through the 1960s." Certainly Sundblom's Circle of apprentices are responsible for some of the most gorgeous interpretations of the female form. Below, a couple of the most famous pin-up artists of that group: Gil Elvgren...... and...

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Sundblom's Sarasota Circle

This may not look anything like a Sundblom Santa, but you could say that Haddon Sundblom had a hand in its creation. It was painted by Thornton Utz, and Utz was another of Haddon Sundblom's many apprentices during the early days of his career. Utz was a long way and many years from Sunny's Chicago studio when he painted this piece for the December 1958 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. He was living in Sarasota, Florida where he had moved his family,...

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The Sundblom Circle

In the introduction to his June 1956 article on Haddon Sundblom in American Artist magazine, author Frederic Whitaker writes, "Through my art association activities I meet many commercial artists, and having asked about their beginnings I am amazed at the size of the majority who reply, "Oh, I began with Sunny in Chicago."Below, Nick Hufford and a few of the many artists of what became known as "The Sundblom Circle."(Aron Gagliardo tells me the original...

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Stevens, Sundblom, Henry: "The best outfit from New York to the Pacific Coast."

In 1925 Haddon Sundblom's apprenticeship ended when he left the Charles Everett Johnson Studio to form Stevens, Sundblom and Henry with new business partners Howard Stevens and Edwin Henry. Coca-Cola became on of the new studio's first clients - and, in tandem with his early work on that account, Haddon Sundblom became an "important illustrator." Speaking about the early days of the studio, Sundblom said, "Ed Henry was one of the first to leave...

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Haddon Sundblom and the 'First Stroke'

Along with his night school art lessons and his early days as a commercial art studio apprentice, the young Haddon Sundblom had some other extremely important influences that informed his painting technique. Among others, Howard Pyle, John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, Anders Zorn and Joaquin Sorolla were all practitioners of a kind of painting adapted from the Impressionists called "alla prima" or "first stroke," The technique involved "laying...

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