The Hungarian artist, Willy Pogany, died on this date in 1955 after a long and distinguished career. While his professional commissions were many and varied--he did ads for Palmolive, for instance--from the beginning of his career until the end, Willy was renowned for his illustrations drawn from myths and legends.

While I'm positive that I encountered Pogany's work before I went off to college, I didn't become a hardcore Pogany fan until that point in my life. I was hanging out in my college library browsing the Mythology section, as one does. My gaze fell upon the spine of The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles. Pulling it off the shelf, I saw that it was written by the mighty Padraic Colum and illustrated by someone named "Willy Pogany".

I started thumbing through it until I came to this:

Pogany is illustrating the first scene in the saga of Jason and the Argonauts, wherein a slave of King Aeson gives the baby Jason to be fostered and schooled by Chiron, wise king of the Centaurs.

To my mind, it is one of the finest works of art illustrating a scene from the Greek myths that has ever been wrought. Its composition and fairly flat perspective recalls that of the red-and-black figure vases from Classical Greece. The animal power and solemn majesty of Chiron is perfectly depicted. Not one line is wasted or superfluous.

Taking the book home and reading further--Colum's prose retelling is still probably the best ever written for younger readers--I came to the tale of Perseus. Near the end was this illustration of Perseus brandishing the head of Medusa and turning the evil king, Polydectes, to stone:

In this piece, the lineage from and homage to the Classical Greek style is even more striking.

I soon went back and found The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy, another collaborative effort by Colum and Pogany, Once again, it was filled with impeccable line art by Mr. Pogany. While nearly every illustration in the book has something to recommend it, this picture of Odysseus returning to Ithaca and being greeted one last time by his faithful hound, Argos, is my personal favorite.

Further searching led me to The Children of Odin, which was--once again--produced by what I now recognized as the dream team of Colum and Pogany. Check out this illustration of Odin the Wanderer:

As with the Chiron piece, I consider it one of the finest renditions of ol' One-Eye that has ever been put to paper or canvas.

Up to this point, all of the illos I've shown you have been in what some call Pogany's "children's book" style. I consider it a disparaging term, but it's somewhat accurate. Pogany used fairly similar styles throughout all three books, though the art in The Children of Odin is a little "busier", since--I believe-- Pogany was not paying homage to Classical Greek art in the Nordic book. Still, all three share a similar spare style.

However, Pogany, as has been noted many times over the last hundred years, was a very versatile artist. He wrote popular instructional books on oil painting, watercolors and line drawing. Let's look at one of his paintings:

That's Sigurd the Volsung riding through Odin's flames to claim his Valkyrie. Pretty bad-ass.

One of Willy's better markets in the 1940s was The Atlantic Weekly. Hardcore readers of the DMR Blog should recognize that name. A. Merritt was the editor. Just as he had done for Virgil Finlay and Hannes Bok in the 1930s, ol' Abe gave Pogany a venue for his talents in the pages of the most widely-circulated periodical in North America.

Here is Willy's painting of "Cuchullain and the Warrior Women":

Pogany got back to his Finno-Ugric roots with this painting of "The Tale of Lemminkainen and Kylliki", which was drawn from the Finnish epic, the Kalevala. Both this painting and the Cuchullain one were done on Merritt's watch, well before he died in 1943.

Pogany continued selling to The Atlantic Weekly after Abe passed away. Check out this splendid painting, "The Temptations of Ulysses: Sirens", from 1948...

While I don't think Project Gutenberg is the be-all-end-all---I believe Roy Glashan's site is better, pound for pound, albeit smaller--the Gutenberg folks have done lovers of the Good Stuff a huge favor by putting up the three Colum/Pogany books I mentioned earlier, complete with all of Willy's timeless artwork. Here are the links:

The Golden Fleece and The Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles

The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy

The Children of Odin

I hope you've enjoyed this look at the art of Pogany. Raise a glass of Tokaji wine to his shade.