Stripper's Guide

1928

…Some time after he had come to the United States his elder brother, who had won some fame for the family name in London, suggested that, as both used the same initials “S. A,” in signing their pictures, the younger might do well to change his name.

An office boy named Stanley Adamson was working in the business end. We brought him up to the art department. Later, under the name of Penryn [sic] Stanlaws, he became widely known as a portrait painter and magazine-cover artist of exceptional delicacy and refinement.

…[Stanlaws] tried to get a start at Chicago, meeting with but little success. Stanlaws went back to Scotland, where he became acquainted with David Whitelaw, a celebrated decorator. They formed a partnership and Stanlaws, with Whitelaw, returned to America and met with the most gratifying success. Stanlaws made the figures in the drawing and his partner the decorations, the pair producing a high class of work. Whitelaw finally returned to Scotland, but Stanlaws remained, working for the different periodicals. His productions appear from time to time in Judge, Life, Scribner’s and other leading publications.

…There is, for instance, the Stanlaws girl. Although drawn by two young artists who are both English, she is yet intrinsically American. She developed gradually, and not until some six months ago did she appear in her greatest efflorescence. Inasmuch, moreover, as one of the members of the curious collaboration that achieved the Stanlaws girl is no longer active on this side of the water, this girl deserves special mention. She appeared, for a time, in our periodicals, charming us with her wonderful hats, her arabesques cloaks, her gowns as wide-skirted as the horizon itself, and then—she passed from our ken. She was something of a pretty vagary….

The Princeton Tiger’s New Editor.

James F. Adamson (Penrhyn Stanlaws) was elected advisory editor of The Princeton Tiger to-day. Mr. Adamson is taking a two years course in English in the university. He refused a position on the staff of The Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia to enter Princeton.

...Going back to the other side he was for a time assistant art editor of To-day and The Idler. After a short time he came back to New York and did a series of “Soldier Girls” for Judge, which brought him considerable notice and led to so much work that he was able to send himself to Princeton.

Grant Hamilton was the big shot on Judge. Although little John Schleicher was the editor, Hamilton really was the brains of the magazine. He was a big-bodied, big-hearted man, beloved by all the artists. He was, moreover, the kind of man whose face proclaims that he could not do an ignoble act….

When Grant Hamilton knew that Penrhyn Stanlaws wanted to go through Princeton he arranged to give him enough steady work to support him during his college years. As a result the dainty Stanlaws Girl became a part of the American scene.

P. Stanley Adamson, the artist whose work over the signature of Penrhyn Stanlaws has attracted attention in the past year, and who has been attending Princeton University, has been elected a member of the Monday Night Club. Mr. Adamson is an Englishman who came to this country a few years ago and who has become a prominent illustrator.

Princeton’s Virtuous Tiger!!
An Effort to Placate the Critic of Its Former Alleged Low Tone.

The Sun has told how a writer in the Daily Princetonian of Princeton University declared that the January number of the Princeton Tiger was low in tone and how the editors of the Tiger used this criticism as an advertisement and by means of it sold double the usual edition. Not content with this the Tiger editors decided to turn out at least one number which might satisfy their critic. The result of their efforts appeared last week.

At the top of the editorial page the editors are given as follows: “The Rev. Dr. Swallow, the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, the Rt. Rev. Dr. Sheldon. Lay editors—Hon. Anthony Comstock. Mrs. Grannis. Hon. W. T. Stead.” This will indicate the tone of the articles. One editorial calls attention to the growing need of a second chapel at Princeton. Another is an appeal for the removal of the art museum, which it says is “A place, sad as it is to tell, which is given up to the exhibition of Athenian and Theban art—statuary, indeed, that one would never think or shipping home to his family.”

The frontispiece is a “Stanlaws” girl. But in this case she is dressed in clerical robes and halo. Her eyes are cast demurely down, and tears glisten on her cheeks, tears of remorse, perhaps, for the many times she has flitted through the Tiger’s pages playing golf, skating, flirting or indulging in some other unseemly sport. The drawing is easily recognized as the work of Penrhyn Stanlaws, now a senior at Princeton, in spite of the fact that in this instance he signs himself “Penitent Stand-forlorn, ’01.”

…before he had finished the college course, he came to the decision that he would go to Paris and take up the study of the French drama. Once in a Parisian atmosphere he developed more interest in painting than in the theatre with the result that he enrolled at Julien’s and remained in Paris four years. His first picture to be exhibited at the Salon was a portrait of his wife, and this, was followed by other invitations to exhibit there.

There is one English artist who has also succeeded in delineating a type of the American girl, and that is Mr. Penrhyn Stanlaws, whose work is as familiar on this side of the Atlantic as it is on the other. Yet, though typified as American, the Stanlaws girl” is in fact, really British in character and style.

In London, Stanlaws had a second career as a playwright. The New York Press, April 6, 1903, had this account:

American Play for Irving.
Penrhyn Stanlaws, the Artist Enters New Field of Work. 

London, March 28.—Although Penryhn Stanlaws, the American depictor of pretty girls, is not known as well in this country as he is in the United States, interest has been aroused here by the announcement that a one-act play from his pen has been accepted by Sir Henry Irving. Stanlaws has been here several months.

“About the play I really can tell you little,” said he to-day, “for the simple reason Sir Henry has asked me—though I don’t know why—to keep the plot a secret. This much I can say: The play is an American one, a tragedy and modern. The time is 1886. As a matter of fact, it isn’t really finished, and I’m going back to the United States in April to get certain local color I need. When the play will be produced has not been decided. It will be in this country. If it is successful it will be played by Sir Henry in America. Of course I am delighted to have the play taken by Sir Henry, especially as it is my first.”

Stanlaws has been encouraged by his first stroke of luck in his new field to go ahead therein, and he has two other plays on the stocks. He says he always has cherished an ambition to be a dramatist, and confessed he would rather be a successful playwright that a successful artist. “But I should like to be both,” he adds naively.

In Paris, Stanlaws was a “pupil of Julian Academy and of Benjamin-Constant and Laurens”, according to the American Art Annual, Volume XII (1916). Adair's New Encyclopedia said Stanlaws exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904. While in Paris, he met William Somerset Maugham. In the book, Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham, Robert Calder wrote:

By far the most interesting part of Maugham’s Paris experience were the evenings he spent at a restaurant in the rue d’Odessa called the ‘Chat Blanc’. Situated near the Gare Montparnasse, this cheap and nourishing cafe had a ground floor for regular trade, but an upstairs room reserved for a varied group of artists, companions, models, and lovers….

…The unofficial club, however, was primarily an artists’ circle, and Maugham has drawn portraits of many of them...where the Chat Blanc is described in detail as the ‘Chien Noir’….Penryhn [sic] Stanlaws, a young and successful American illustrator, is described as ‘Flanagan’, an amiable poseur, in Of Human Bondage…

Below are some descriptions of Flanagan in Of Human Bondage:

page 194: Flanagan was there again: he was an American, a short, snub-nosed youth with a jolly face and a laughing mouth.

page 213: Sometimes they went to the Bal Bullier. On these occasions Flanagan accompanied them. His excitability and his roisterous enthusiasm made them laugh. He was an excellent dancer, and before they had been ten minutes in the room he was prancing round with some little shop-girl whose acquaintance he had just made.

page 250: Flanagan, though he was the most scatter-brained person in the world, had a tenderness of heart which was unexpected and charming. Whenever anyone was ill he installed himself as sick-nurse. His gaiety was better than any medicine.

The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 29, 1921, covered the reunion of Stanlaws and Maugham at a Hollywood studio lot.

A dozen years ago Arnold Bennett, the famous British author; Penrhyn Stanlaws, the eminent American artist, and W. Somerset Maugham, noted English playwright and novelist, were “pals” together in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Then unknown to the world of art they lived a happy-go-lucky Bohemian existence. Recently Stanlaws and Maugham met again in Paris—Paris transformed to

The Back Lot

of the Lasky studio, Hollywood. And Arnold Bennett was with them in spirit if not in person. For it was on a latin Quarter set of Bennett’s story “Sacred and Profane Love,” William D. Taylor’s Paramount production starring Elsie Ferguson, that Maugham and Stanlaws renewed their old-time acquaintance “It brings back fond memories,” wistfully remarked Maugham as he glanced toward a typical wineshop, a counterpart of the famous cafe in the Avenue de Clichy which he so carefully described in his “Moon and Sixpence.”

Another observation of Stanlaws is in Aleister Crowley: The Beast Demystified (2011):

Stanlaws, the ‘creator’ of the ‘Stanlaws girl’ was there, a terrible American, and also a girl I had previously seen at Kelly’s. The girl and Stanlaws and the man who was the girl’s host threw bread at each other, and sang American songs very loudly. It was terrible at times….

The Strand Magazine, April 1904, published “Artists’ Types of Beauty” which selected paintings and illustrations of women from the past 400 years. The “Stanlaws Girl” was included. A portrait by Stanlaws, below, appeared in the January 1908 Strand.

According to American Newspaper Comics (2012), Stanlaws produced the Sunday strip, The Pretenders, which ran in September 1906. It was syndicated by the American-Journal-Examiner.

On December 7, 1907, Stanlaws was aboard the S.S. St. Paul which departed from Southampton, England. He arrived in New York City on the 15th according to a passenger list at Ancestry.com. The same date and ship were on his naturalization documents.

A number of Stanlaws’s drawings continued to appear in London periodicals including the Windsor Magazine in 1908; the stories “Mis’lavinia” had four illustrations, and “Violet’s Flat” had three.

American Newspaper Comics said Stanlaws’s second Sunday newspaper series was Oh, Winnie!, which debuted September 27, 1908 and ended March 28, 1909.

In addition to drawing and painting models, Stanlaws witnessed his colleague’s marriage to a model. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, (Texas), May 7, 1909, ran the Associated Press story on Corey Kilvert’s secret wedding.

Corey Kilvert,the well known artist, and Miss Elsie Dora Bernard, known among New York studios as one of the prettiest of professional models, were married last night at Larchmont. The wedding was secret, the only one knowing about it until the ceremony was performed, being Penrhyn Stanlaws, the illustrator and portrait painter who accompanied the couple to Larchmont….

Later in 1909, Stanlaws and a few other artists were chosen to illustrate the Armour & Company calendar. The painting, below, ran in the Denver Post, November 21, 1909.

Books with illustrations by Stanlaws include The Custodian (1904), Hilda of the Hippodrome (1910), How to Draw: A Practical Book of Instruction in the Art of Illustration (1904; page 58), The Misdemeanors of Nancy (1902), 1902 Olio (Amherst College), The Opinion Shop (1913), Pippins and Peaches (1909), Caricature, Eleventh Edition (1910) here, here and here, and Caricature, 14th Edition (1911) with five illustrations.

Pippins and Peaches

—Alex Jay 

Tomorrow: Part 2

Labels: Ink-Slinger Profiles

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