Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Richard Green: Reportage Artist, Race Car Driver and... Fashion Illustrator?

The March 1959 issue of Esquire contains a sketchbook featuring some gorgeous reportage artwork by Richard Green.

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The title page suggests Green was both the artist of this feature and a race car driver, though it's not made clear if he drove at that actual event.

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Green turned in some really lively drawings, beautifully executed. They were originally reproduced at an unfortunate small size...

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... so I took the liberty of blowing them up individually for your viewing pleasure.

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About a year later, Richard Green's work appeared again in Esquire - this time for a fashion feature.

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So was Richard Green primarily a fashion illustrator? I must admit I didn't search far and wide for information on the artist. But this small sampling of Green's work raises an interesting thought: that fashion illustrators are, by the nature of their specialty, ideally suited to do reportage art as well. Consider, for instance, Francis Marshall another example of just such an artist.

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Returning momentarily to yesterday's post, its also noteworthy that Al Parker and Richard Green used such dramatically different ways of interpreting very similar subject matter.

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