[msb-alumni] Bid Dick, Bid!

From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2014 15:09:41 -0400
BlankI never knew that Dick, Jane, and Spot had been painted or that they 
were patterned after real people.
Steve



Bid, Dick, bid: 'Dick and Jane' artworks for sale Associated Press In the 
portrait, the little boy's blue eyes twinkle as he looks straight ahead. His 
apple cheeks shine. There's a gap in his teeth, and his reddish-brown hair 
is just slightly tousled. He's an All-American boy. He's Dick, of the 
illustrated "Dick and Jane" series that helped teach generations of American 
schoolchildren to read from the 1930s to the 1970s. He's also Nancy 
Childress' childhood neighbor and the model for the drawing by her father, 
Robert Childress, that along with Jane, Sally, Spot and others brought the 
pages of the schoolbooks to life. Childress is selling her father's artwork 
at an auction in New Hampshire at the end of April. Along with Dick, there 
are other portraits, black-and-white drawings of John F. and Jackie Kennedy 
and offerings from his collection of pastel paintings of college buildings 
around the country. "As an artist, there were many illustrators during the 
time my father was working," Childress said. "This was the day of the 
illustrator. What's different about my father's illustrations is that most 
could either do landscape or people, and he had the uncanny ability to do 
both equally well. Robert Childress' realism will remind the viewer 
immediately of Norman Rockwell's illustrations and that's not a complete 
coincidence: The two were friends. Childress said her father, who retired to 
Warner, New Hampshire, and died in 1983, never took an art class. He learned 
to paint with a paint set an aunt and uncle gave him before he was 10. And 
he didn't just use the neighbor boy as a model for the series that he 
illustrated during the 1950s and '60s: Nancy was Sally, her sister Susan 
became Jane and their mother was one of Robert Childress' inspirations. "We 
loved it," she said. "My sister and I loved getting into costumes. And he 
would always include us. He would ask us, 'What do you think of this? Is it 
too green? Is it too blue? But the opinion that mattered was my mother's. 
Born in South Carolina, Childress was living in Ithaca, N.Y., when he was 
commissioned to paint a portrait of H.E. Babcock, a former chairman of the 
board for Cornell University. Through his connection with Babcock, he met 
Duncan Hines, the home food entrepreneur whose cakes and other products 
still stock grocery shelves. Childress painted the portrait of Hines that 
adorned his product packaging and Childress launched a career in 
advertising. He moved the family to Old Saybrook, Conn., where he painted 
ads for Coca-Cola, Mobil, Wonder Bread and Campbell Soup, among others. Some 
of the ads are in the auction. Auctioneer Ronald Pelletier of Brookline 
Auction Gallery said estimates for the roughly 50 lots of Childress art run 
from $100 to $2,000 and there is no reserve bid, meaning the lowest bid 
wins. He said there is a market for original art, but he couldn't predict 
how the Childress collections will fare. He is most struck by how 
multidisciplined Childress was. "I mean, the man could work in any medium," 
he said. The live online auction will be held April 30.
[msb-alumni] Bid Dick, Bid!

Other related posts:
