Harry Anderson (artist)
| Harry Anderson | |
|---|---|
| Born |
August 11, 1906 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | November 19, 1996 (aged 90) |
| Nationality | American (United States) |
| Education | Syracuse School of Art |
| Known for | Painting, Illustration |
| Awards | New York Art Directors Club, Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame |
| Patron(s) | Seventh-day Adventist Church, LDS Church, Exxon, numerous magazines |
Joseph Harry Anderson (August 11, 1906 – November 19, 1996) was an American illustrator and a member of the Illustrator's Hall of Fame. A devout Seventh-day Adventist artist, he is best known for Christian-themed illustrations he painted for the Adventist church and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was also a popular illustrator of short stories in American weekly magazines during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Originally intending to be a mathematician, in 1925 while attending the University of Illinois, Joseph Harry Anderson discovered a talent and love for drawing and painting. Harry's father Joseph named all his male children "Joseph" so each son went by their middle names, thus Harry Anderson is the name he went by. In 1927, he moved to Syracuse, New York and attended the Syracuse School of Art with friend and fellow artist Tom Lovell for classical art education. He graduated in 1931 during the Great Depression and had difficulty making a living. Within a year he earned enough by doing art for magazines to return home to Chicago. By 1937 he was working on national advertising campaigns and doing work for several major magazines, such as Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post and others.
About 1940, Anderson married Ruth Huebel, a girl who worked in his building and posed for him on one occasion. The following year he went to work for Haddon Sundblom's studio. In 1944, Anderson and his wife joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church and, by request, in 1945 he did his first painting of Jesus. Anderson's painting, "What Happened to Your Hand?", depicting Jesus with modern-day children was decried as blasphemous by some adults, but was eventually printed in the publishing program after the editor's daughter longingly wished that she too could sit on Jesus' lap like the girl in the painting. This was the very first painting of Jesus done showing Him in a modern-day setting. From that time on, he split his time between commercial illustrations and religious ones. He painted approximately 300 religious-themed illustrations for the Seventh-day Adventist Church at near minimum wage.
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