Joseph Christian (J. C.) and Frank X. Leyendecker were born in Germany1 in the 1870s and immigrated with their parents to Chicago (where their uncle owned a successful brewery) as young boys. As young men, they studied art together in Chicago and then in Paris, and by the late 1890s they had established themselves as commercial artists of international renown.2 The brothers are best known for their stylized portraits of human beings, especially men in uniform (more about that later, but what you’re already assuming is probably correct). They specialized in advertisements and magazine covers, and their idealized illustrations of strapping, broad-shouldered football players, dapper young soldiers, and immaculate men-about-town perfectly embodied the optimism of the new century. J. C. was the more successful of the two—Frank had aspirations to be a “serious” artist, and became increasingly resentful of J. C.’s acclaim in the commercial sphere, turning to morphine and drink (habits he’d picked up in Paris) and eventually dying of a drug overdose in 1924. J. C.’s career would continue into the 1940s, although by that time he had been overshadowed in the public consciousness by his most famous protégé—a certain Norman Rockwell. When he died in 1951 of heart disease, he had been essentially forgotten by everyone but a small circle of family and admirers.3
And yet, the Leyendeckers had a continuing influence on pop culture that far outstrips their personal fame; even in the 21st century, the brothers’ work keeps turning up. Their human figures were used as reference for the art style of Dishonored (objectively the greatest video game ever made) and Team Fortress 2 (which I confess I have not played). Films and TV shows set in the 1910-1920s often use them as inspiration for costume design. And while the main focus on the Leyendeckers’ art is always the people and the sculpted perfection of their bodies and clothes, both brothers occasionally included speculative technology (especially flying machines) in their works—echoes of which can be seen in covers of Popular Science and Weird Tales by later artists (which would, in turn, give birth to all manner of retrofuturism).
J. C. Leyendecker in particular still maintains a devoted following, both because of his iconic style and because of the obvious influence of his sexuality4 on his art (I told you we’d come back to this). The blatantly androphyllic quality of his muscular young men with perfect cheekbones and enigmatic expressions is easy to understand when you realize that his longtime romantic partner Charles Beach5 was the model for many of them. While this can give his work a monotonous quality—Leyendecker’s paragons of masculine beauty all look 1) like they’ve just descended from the Platonic world of forms, and 2) exactly like his boyfriend—it makes his illustrations and paintings instantly recognizable. And, like any good artist, he could do other things. His cherubic babies were extremely popular, and his old people have a delightful grotesque quality to their comically exaggerated faces. But, J. C. will probably always be remembered first and foremost as the glorifier of the American man—a Florenz Ziegfeld of commercial art.
Let the Leyendecker Follies begin.
Note: Because most of the Leyendeckers’ works were done for hire, it’s often difficult to ascertain an official “title” for any given piece. I’ve indicated doubtful or speculative titles with an asterisk.
The Leyendeckers’ ancestors were Sephardic Jews who fled persecution in Spain and converted to Catholicism when they (eventually) settled in Germany. J. C. claimed the family was Dutch, but he was either mistaken or covering up his Jewish ancestry, which would have done him no favors in either Germany or the United States at that time.
The 1890s marked the first time in modern history that commercial art (e.g., advertisements, posters) was taken seriously as art and started to be collected.
Only seven people attended his funeral, and his paintings and sketches were unceremoniously sold off in a yard sale—many for as low as fifty cents.
According to the authors of J. C. Leyendecker: American Imagist, Frank was also gay, but is not known to have had any long-term relationships like that of his brother with Beach. American Imagist, incidentally, is an excellent guide to the lives of the Leyendecker brothers, and it’s also the source for every juicy footnote in this post.
J. C. met Beach—a tall, handsome Canadian with refined manners and a mysterious past—in 1903, and used him as a model for many of his paintings and illustrations. Beach was everything J. C. was not—rugged, athletic, charming, and confident. An ostentatious dresser, he had no education or artistic talent to speak of, but liked to imagine himself as J. C.’s collaborator in artistic matters. The tendency among some Leyendecker enthusiasts to glamorize their relationship is… let’s say “ill-considered.” Norman Rockwell (who knew them both) described Beach as a “real parasite,” and he became increasingly controlling of J. C.’s private life, finances, and artistic work from the 1920s onward. This included driving a wedge between J. C. and his sister Mary—who’d taken care of the brothers for years—and openly insulting and belittling Frank, which was likely a factor in his (probable) suicide in 1924. J. C. and Beach held elaborate parties at their mansion in New Rochelle during the 1920s—their guests included a young F. Scott Fitzgerald—but by the 1930s, Beach’s fear that J. C.’s fortune might run out (rendering them both penniless) had led the couple to withdraw from high society. The fears turned out to be unfounded: when J. C. died in 1951, he left Beach the mansion and studio, a vintage Pierce-Arrow automobile, and a comfortable fortune divided between Beach and J. C.’s sister Mary.