John Philip Falter
John Philip Falter (February 28, 1910 – May 20, 1982) was an American artist best known for his many cover paintings for The Saturday Evening Post.
As a high school student, Falter created a comic strip, Down Thru the Ages, which was published in the Falls City Journal.
After graduating from high school in 1928, Falter studied at the Kansas City Art Institute where he met and became friends with R. G. Harris, Emery Clarke, and Richard E. Lyon.
At this time in the Great Depression, when most young artists had difficulty finding work, Falter began illustrating covers for pulp magazines.
He opened a studio in New Rochelle, New York, which had long been a colony for illustrators, including such artists as Frederic Remington and Norman Rockwell.
Within a few years, his three Kansas City Art Institute friends Harris, Clarke, and Lyon had moved to New Rochelle to share a studio with Falter and launch their careers as freelance illustrators.
By 1938, he had acquired several advertising clients including Gulf Oil, Four Roses Whiskey, Arrow Shirts, and Pall Mall.
[5] Falter's first Saturday Evening Post cover, a portrait of the magazine's founder, Benjamin Franklin, is dated January 10, 1943.
[6] Although best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers, of which he produced 129, Falter also provided illustrations for numerous other publications, including Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, McCall's, Life Magazine and Look.
An excellent portrait painter, Falter had Clark Gable, James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland and Admiral "Bull" Halsey among his sitters.
He took great pleasure in visiting jazz friends at clubs such as Eddie Condon's in New York City, where he would sketch the musicians live, then sit in on clarinet.
As the age of illustrated magazines ended during the 1970s and 1980s, Falter turned to his passions for historical and American Western themes.
Falter completed over 200 paintings in the field of Western art, with emphasis on the migration of 1843 to 1880 from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains.
His peers honored him with election to the Illustrators Hall of Fame] in 1976, and membership in the National Academy of Western Art in June 1978.
[8] When Falter was asked to look back over his career, he commented that he had never created a painting that he wouldn't like to do over; he always saw something he thought he could improve on.
