Mead Schaeffer
As far as I can tell, there are few publicly available photographs of Mead Schaeffer. The first one you’ll find is courtesy of illustrationhistory.org. Schaeffer- an older man in a probably-tweed suit- leans against a blank easel, head tilted in good humor. The black-and-white picture is not credited, though the Saturday Evening Post will tell you it was sourced from the Norman Rockwell museum. The only other picture I have found was a reference photo for Rockwell- Schaeffer with his back to the camera, holding a tattoo gun to a model. Rockwell and Schaeffer were friends, icons of the Golden Age of American illustration.
Schaeffer was born in 1898. He died in 1980. The photograph, in that light, seems modern. Today, he is little-known. He was a painter, and many of his illustrations were for books or magazines. (He did two for the Count of Monte Cristo and Les Miserables respectively.) Golden-Age painters with styles like his were not rare- just look at J.C Leyendecker- but despite Leyendecker’s staying power, Schaeffer has been, for the most part, forgotten. Leyendecker, with his textured, often geometric shapes and distinct art deco style mostly seen in magazine advertisements, has at least four art books to his name. I own one of them. His work is remarkable, his colors glowing, his shape language practically flawless.
But, then, so is Schaeffer’s. In fact, if you happen to be an artist with a Pinterest account (which most of us have), Schaeffer’s work is inescapable. Spend long enough on there and the shape of his brushstrokes, the crispness of his figures, will become instantly recognizable.
There is one book written about Schaeffer. David Apatoff’s The Life and Art of Mead Schaeffer was published in 2020. It is, as far as I can tell, out of publication. The Illustrated Press page sends you to a 404. Any link that could lead you to it is dead. Even ThriftBooks and Ebay will tell you it’s sold out. The book has, essentially, become lost media. I emailed the author, who has a blog post on the book, asking when it might return to print. I have not received a response, nor did I expect one. The loss stings. That book contained sketchbook pages given by Schaeffer’s daughters, art that no one except a select group of people, now, have seen. By allowing such a skilled artist to fade into obscurity, we have deprived ourselves of the very thing we take for granted every day- good art. We allow these artists to disappear and die their second death. What do we lose in doing so? What have we lost in names far lesser known than Schaeffer’s?