Discover a Master
Frederic Dorr Steele was born in northern Michigan in 1873. He came to New York City when he was 16 and studied at the National Academy and the Art Students League, where he would eventually become an instructor. He became a freelance artist in 1897. He drew pictures for stories by Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and many other authors.
Sherlock Holmes
Steele’s Sherlock Holmes was a hero with a strong profile, pipe, deerstalker hat, and, occasionally, a magnifying glass – elements which came to symbolize how detectives looked worldwide. Early silent and sound films of the Holmes stories relied on Steele’s images to help shape their production design and costumes. His drawings of the character influenced how other artists drew Holmes, and still do so today.
This is Steele’s drawing for the cover of Collier’s Magazine for September 26, 1903, when Sherlock Holmes returned from his supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls. The story was called “The Adventure of the Empty House,” and featured six of Steele’s illustrations.
Collier’s Magazine
In the days before radio, television and movies, illustrated magazines and books were primary forms of entertainment. Collier’s was an American general interest magazine of “fiction, fact, sensation, wit, humor, news.” By 1892, Collier’s was one of the largest selling magazines in the United States, with a circulation of over 250,000. Steele worked for many magazines like Collier’s, and many newspapers and book publishers.
Steele drew eleven spectacular color covers and nearly fifty interior illustrations for “The Return of Sherlock Holmes.” The series of 13 stories appeared in Collier’s from 1903 through 1905. In the years that followed, he continued to illustrate all but four of the thirty-three additional Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even as he worked with other authors, art editors, and publications.
Steele drew these troubled clients consulting Holmes in Baker Street for “The Adventure of the Creeping Man” in Hearst’s International magazine for March 1923.
Career
Early in his career Steele worked for the artist and art editor Edward Penfield as a staff artist at Harper’s. Advances in photo-engraving and printing technology made it easier for publishers to launch new magazines, and Steele became a sought-after independent artist. So popular was his work that the novelist Richard Harding Davis suggested he illustrate his new mystery In the Fog. Steele went on to illustrate more works by Davis and many other authors.
In the 1930’s he worked regularly for the New York Herald Tribune’s theatre section, where he captured performances by Edmund Gwenn, Judith Anderson, Katharine Cornell, Paul Lukas, Tallulah Bankhead, Maurice Evans and other stars of the day.
Edward Penfield was a major figure in the evolution of graphic design. He developed a unique style of simplified figures with bold outlines. Considered the father of the American poster, his work has been included in almost every major book on American Illustration.
Recognition
As his reputation grew, Steele became an early member of the Society of Illustrators in New York City. The society’s second annual exhibition in 1903 featured six of his illustrations, and one of his woodcuts on the cover of the program.
Steele was the first living American artist to have work exhibited by the Library of Congress in their new Cabinet of American Illustration, when over 100 of his drawings were exhibited in 1937.