Penrhyn Stanlaws (March 19, 1877-May 19, 1957) was an illustrator, director, and tastemaker. He illustrated hundreds of magazine covers, including Life and the Saturday Evening Post, dabbled in directing motion pictures, and launched the Hôtel des Artistes as a home for artists.
He was elected to The Lambs in 1920 as a theatrical member.
He was born Penrhyn Stanley Adamson in Dundee, Scotland, to James and Jessie (Leith) Adamson, on March 19, 1877. His father was a lime brick and cement merchant, but the trade was not passed to his sons. Penrhyn’s older brother, Sydney Adamson, also became a successful artist.
Their father died in 1890, and Penrhyn emigrated to America in 1891, at 13. By the opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition, the famous world’s fair held in Chicago in 1893, the teenage artist had found work on the art staff of the Chicago Daily News. At his brother’s suggestion, Penrhyn changed his last name to Stanlaws, so as to avoid any professional confusion between the two illustrators. Penrhyn is a Welsh word meaning ‘headland.’
Establishing a studio in New York at the turn of the century, Stanlaws drew for Judge, earning enough money to enroll at Princeton University in 1899. He studied art and was editor of The Tiger; but left college in 1901 to pursue art in Paris. For the next six years Stanlaws studied at the Académie Julian, under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. His first painting to be exhibited was a portrait in 1904. He returned to the U.S. in 1907, and began working full-time as a cover artist. He also wrote plays on the side, but none reached any level of success. On April 30, 1913, he married Jean Pughsley, a great beauty that he also drew.
While working as an in-demand artist, he also became involved in a project that would have lasting impact in New York. In 1915 Stanlaws embarked on a bold enterprise, the construction of the Hôtel des Artistes at 1 West 67th Street. His studio at 27 West 67th Street was in a building that had earlier been constructed by ten artist-owners. Stanlaws was in the same company as two other popular artists who were future Lambs’ members, Howard Chandler Christy and James Montgomery Flagg, who used the same studio space (and it appears, the same models), as Stanlaws. As president of the Hôtel des Artistes Co-operative Syndicate, Stanlaws chose a plot fronting 150 feet on the north side of 67th Street, just off Central Park West. The building was a huge success; Christy and Ziegfeld Follies photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston were among the earliest tenants.
In 1915 he painted Follies star Olive Thomas; the nude “Between Poses” was a Jazz Age classic. He used her as a model for Collier’s magazine covers. During WWI and the early 1920s produced his “pretty girl” covers for Ainslee’s, Collier’s, Hearst’s, Judge, and the Ladies’ Home Journal. For twenty years there was a Stanlaws cover on newsstands every month. At this time his signature on paintings took on a recognizable look: a red dot is behind the “S” of his surname.
Stanlaws was not content with his success at painting and with the apartment co-op duties. In 1920, the same year he was elected to The Lambs, he took leave from his magazine assignments to become a motion picture director. He signed a contract to write and direct for the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. He was to spend 1920-21 learning the business at the company’s studio in New York, and then begin active work on pictures, both as writer and director, in Hollywood. Among his Paramount pictures were The Little Minister (1921), Singed Wings (1922), and At the End of the World (1921). By 1922 the studio pictures were gaining notice for his artistic and stylized films. He didn’t last long in the industry, returning to illustration and other pursuits. He, like Christy, found himself in Atlantic City as a judge in the Miss America beauty pageant, where his thoughts on bobbed hair could make headlines.
Stanlaws split his time in the Twenties between New York and California. In 1925 his commission for millionaire August Heckscher resulted in a stunning portrait; today it’s part of the Heckscher Museum of Art on Long Island.
During the Depression Stanlaws continued drawing colorful colors in pastels, including the American Magazine, Home, Illustrated Love, Ladies Home Journal, New Movie Magazine, the Saturday Evening Post, This Week, and many advertisements. He produced illustrations for cosmetics, soup, and silk stockings.
During World War II Stanlaws worked in California and a studio in Greenwich, Connecticut. He separated from his wife and lived in a house borrowed from a Princeton classmate. Stanlaws was still contacted by studios to drop by and talk about beauty and style. He worked little in the 1950s. It appears one of his final commercial works was for Look magazine in 1951. He studied every photograph of Abraham Lincoln, including his death mask, to attempt to make the most accurate painting of the 16th president ever. He sold a series of 100 prints of the thoughtful portrait.
Penrhyn Stanlaws perished when his Hollywood studio burned on May 19, 1957. Investigators reported that he “apparently had fallen asleep while smoking in an upholstered chair,” but an autopsy showed no signs of suffocation and Stanlaws apparently died of a heart attack before the outbreak of the fire. He was 80 years old. His classmates took up a collection to settle his affairs and pay funeral expenses. His remains were returned east. Stanlaws is interred with his wife in the village cemetery in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire.
Some Biographical Material From Signed On The Dot: A Collector’s Guide To Penrhyn Stanlaws (2014), by Norman I. Platnick