Al Parker (artist)

Parker's display of talent as a teenager led his grandfather, a Mississippi River Pilot, to pay for Al's first year in Washington University's School of Fine Arts in St. Louis, Missouri in 1922.

He married a fellow student, Evelyn, and later joined with several former classmates to open an advertising agency in St. Louis.

In cooperation with the magazine's art director, he secretly provided every illustration in an issue of Cosmopolitan, using different pseudonyms, styles and mediums for each story.

Over the years, he won more than twenty-five gold medals and awards of excellence in Art Directors Club and Society of Illustrators' shows.

One such commission was an outstanding series of paintings of the Grand Prix auto race of Europe for Sports Illustrated.