INTRODUCTION

ILLUSTRATIONS

ARTICLES AND VIDEOS

A superstar among American illustrators in the heyday of illustrations, Maxwell Coburn Whitmore was best known for his “clinch” scenes, romantic drawings he created using beautiful young actresses as models, among them Grace Kelly. The illustrations were featured on covers of popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, and Ladies’ Home Journal.

“His ability to paint beautiful women is what made him so successful,” said nationally renowned Hilton Head artist Joe Bowler, who worked with Whitmore at the prestigious Charles E. Cooper Studio in New York. “He used the top models and made them into Whitmore girls.”

   Whitmore, who studied at the Dayton Art Institute and later the Chicago Art Institute, began his career as an apprentice for well-known Chicago illustrator Haddon Sundblom. In 1936, he landed a job at the legendary Chicago Herald-Examiner where he learned how to draw everything from burlesque to furniture.

   He worked for a commercial studio in Cincinnati and later a studio in Chicago before signing on with Charles Cooper, who ran the biggest art studio in the country.

  During his illustrious career at Cooper Studio, Whitmore became well known for his action drawings published in Sports Illustrated and serials he painted for John Steinbeck stories. But his greatest notoriety came from painting the top models and movie starts of the era.

   “He was the first illustrator to use Grace Kelly as a model for a Cosmo cover,” Bowler said. “She became one of his ‘Whitmore girls,’ too.”

   When The Society of Illustrators inducted him into their Hall of Fame, they wrote, “There cannot be enough said about the beauty of Coby Whitmore as a person… A man of genuine humility, he seems truly not to know how good he is.”

Whitmore moved to Hilton Head in 1968 and had a tremendous impact on the development of the island as a small arts town. Several other renowned illustrators from New York, including Joe DeMers, Bernard D’Andrea, and Bowler, followed his lead moving to the island years later. The artists formed a group called the Round Table and would meet weekly at the Red Piano Gallery where Whitmore kept a studio.

“His stature as an illustrator elevated the island’s image in the art world,” said Louanne LaRoche who owned the Red Piano Gallery until 1995. “He was a draw for other established and well-known artists.”

Autobiographical Statement from Interview