Monday, December 26, 2011

Illustrations from past decades / part 3 / Carl Evers / Philadelphia Electric Company


The Philadelphia Electric Company ad agency made a wise choice in 1960/61 in using Carl Evers to create these stunning city and industrial landscapes for a marketing campaign. The ads seemed to be more corporate rather than hard sell because the company used illustrations for many years from the mid-fifties.
    I particularly remember several ads in the Saturday Evening Post, each one had three wide paintings showing various aspects of city life (two of the ads are shown above) and I was always amazed at the amount of detail they included. Other ads used one square painting frequently with a bird’s-eye view of a part of the city. Evers was known as a maritime painter who had the knack of capturing very realistic sea and waves so he seemed the obvious choice for these cityscapes crammed with detail. His dock scenes work really well.
    I don’t know how many paintings Evers created for the PEC but years later I still think these are wonderful works of art and I’ve always wondered where they are now
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7 comments:

  1. I've never seen such a fantastic selection as this - very impressive!

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  2. Phil: there are some paintings in the ads at the top of the page that I don't have and I would love to know how many he did for PEC.

    I think I would be willing to pay for a well produced book/portfolio of these illustrations. They really are first class examples of ad art for the period.

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  3. Russell SpanbauerMay 30, 2012 at 7:42 AM

    I have a painting of carl evers of philadelphia ship yard and of the philly sky line. This was commissioned by the Pec in the 1950s. Also have 11 of his pencil illustrations. Great works of art.

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  4. I am a marine artist working on steel.His work is so amazing!His draftsmanship,color,et.al.-I would love to learn more of his step by step techniqueMy late wife,Marilyn Sotto,was also amazing {goggle her}I learned much in my architectural renderings-he takes us both an a very INSPIRATIONAL PLANE.I am working currently on ship and plane fragements-he will be my inspiration.Please let me know anything and thank you!

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    1. Hi John and thanks for your comment. Sorry to say I know nothing about Carl Evers other than he a wonderful marine artist. I can only suggest you Google him.

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    2. I am a watercolorist myself, specializing in nautical & coastal art, and I met Carl Evers in the late '70s when I was in high school. Born in Germany, he was trained at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. On a sky, for example, he first laid in a lighter color, often a light yellow as a base, and would let that dry. He would then selectively re-wet the paper and put in the general cloud formations. Once those had been established and the paper dried, he would go back, again wetting selected areas, and put in details to a cloud pattern, such as a sharp edge at the bottom of a cloud, or sharpening selected edges of a cloud pattern. In other words, several washes built upon each other, getting more specific each time and building upon the patterns created by previous washes until he achieved the desired effect. He also did very detailed pencil drawings, which mapped out the light and shadow patterns, wave patterns and a general layout of the cloud patterns in the sky. This, he told me, made it "a lot easier later on" when he did the finished painting.

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    3. ...interesting comment. I think the reference to the yellow base is probably seen in pic twenty-down of a slipway to a dam. His totally convincing waves are remarkable. Thanks for sharing. Robin

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