Boys Playing Marbles
Original 1940s Illustration Art

This item is sold.  It has been placed here in our online archives as a service for researchers and collectors.

McCoy Marbles
McCoy Marbles McCoy Marbles
McCoy Marbles McCoy Marbles
R. Wilson McCoy
Boys Playing Marbles
American: c. 1940
Airbrush and gouache on illustration board
Signed lower right: R. Wilson McCoy
Inscription lower left margin:  Shell Oil Co. 9695
Inscribed verso: 12-18-40 Wolff Printing Co.
19.5 x 26 inches each, overall
17 x 23.25 inches, image
Sold, please inquire as to the availability of similar items.

Original illustration art two boys crouched on a sunny sidewalk, intent on their game of marbles.  The work is executed in strong colors and simplified volumetric forms, apparently utilizing some airbrush, which creates a smooth, slightly stylized realism related to that of American Regionalist painters such as Grant Wood or Thomas Hart Benton.  This work apparently was commissioned by Shell Oil Co. (based on an inscription in the lower margin); the proportions suggest calendar art, but they could have been created for other type of advertising or promotional publications.

This is signed R. Wilson McCoy, quite possibly the comics artist and illustrator Wilson McCoy.  Nonetheless, Wilson McCoy signed his comics as such, not with the first initial “R.”  Wilson McCoy is best known for drawing the syndicated newspaper comic strip, The Phantom, from World War II until his death in 1961.  He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the American Academy and the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, where he later joined the faculty.  In addition to his work in comics, he produced magazine and advertising illustrations and covers for publications such as Liberty magazine, as well as calendars, prints and pin-ups.

References:

“Wilson McCoy.”  Lambiek Comiclopedia.  1994-2004.  http://www.lambiek.net/mccoy_wilson.htm (18 November 2004).