John Held, Jr. - Civilization's Progress Illustration - Liberty Magazine - Flapper + Jazz - 1932

Sometimes you just get lucky in this hobby. I was thrilled to get a wonderful piece from Held's Liberty magazine series, "Civilization's Progress", a few years ago. Now I've been able to pick up a second illustration from the same series. Held drew the feature for Liberty over a two year period, 1931 and 1932. This one appeared in the January 23, 1932 issue of the magazine. As with the other piece, Held drew the feature in two parts. The earlier part of history was represented by one of his linocut-style illustrations drawn on scratch board (thanks to Sara Duke from the LoC for the information), while the contemporary version was done in his full-on Jazz Age Art Deco approach. This feature deals with the waltz of yesteryear versus the Ha-Cha-Cha of today. You can see the published version in the additional images.

I'm not sure there is a scan on earth that can do true justice to the fine line and delicate shading of Held's work, but I've done my best here. I love the composition of the piece that starts in the upper left and moves diagonally downward towards the lower right, ending at that sweet, sweet dog. The musicians are fantastic, with the contrast of their outfits setting off the fine-line work. But it is the flapper who truly steals the show of this illustration. Held made figure work look much easier than it was, truly apparent in this piece.

At some point in the not-too-distant future, I'll do a blog post about this feature of Held's. As much as I don't care for his linocut work, it does present an interesting foil to his wonderfully stylized Jazz Age work.