Mr. Conner sold his first cover illustration to The Saturday Evening Post while still in his teens. He later graduated from the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts). He also studied under the renowned illustrator Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art, in the Manhattan terminal of the same name.
“He didn’t like pretty pictures,” Mr. Conner said of Mr. Dunn in the Telegraph interview. “He wanted them to tell a story. He was direct — ‘Is that a red dress? Well make it red, dammit!’”
While in the Navy, Mr. Conner painted signs and illustrated training materials.
He found enough regular work after the war that he and two partners were able to start a studio in 1950. Their company, Neeley Associates, provided illustrations to magazine publishers and advertising agencies from a team of artists.
Mr. Conner’s advertising and magazine work continued for about another decade, until photography became a more favored alternative to illustrations. He shifted to painting cover images for romance novels and eventually shifted again, to illustrating children’s books, including “Dorothy and the Misfit Chimp” (2014), written by Paul Dalio, a step-grandson.
In addition to Mr. Dalio, Mr. Conner is survived by a stepdaughter, Barbara Dalio; a stepson, Louis Gabaldoni; three other step-grandsons; and three step-greatgrandchildren. His wife, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Conner, an artist who was known as Gerta and whose grandmother founded the Whitney Museum of American Art, died in 2009. A cousin, Gloria Vanderbilt, died earlier this year.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/03/arts/mac-conner-dead.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.