Jack Coggins
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| Jack Banham Coggins | |
|---|---|
 Jack Coggins at age 91
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| Born | July 10, 1911 London, England  |
| Died | January 30, 2006 Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States  |
| Occupation | Author and Artist |
| Spouse | Alma Woods |
Jack Banham Coggins (July 10, 1911 – January 30, 2006) was an illustrator, author and artist, who is best known in the United States for his oil paintings of predominantly marine subjects and for his books on space travel.
Jack Coggins also wrote and/or illustrated a large number of books on wide range of subjects, as well as providing many illustrations for advertisements, magazine articles and magazine covers. During World War II, he served as a artist/correspondent for YANK magazine in the United Kingdom and Europe, and captured many war time scenes from the front lines.
Coggins produced in excess of 550 paintings during his long career, and taught master art classes for 45 years. He retired in May 2001 at the age of 90 and died at his home in Pennsylvania in January 2006.
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[edit] Early Life
Jack Coggins was born in London, England on July 10, 1911, the only child of Ethel May (Dobby) and Sidney George Coggins. Sidney Coggins was the Riding Master of the First Regiment of Life Guards (British Army) which were the elite cavalry of the British Army.[1] Coggins's father was retrenched from his position as Regimental Corporal Major during wholesale cutbacks to the military in 1923 (known as the Geddes Axe after the committee chairman Eric Campbell Geddes), when the First and Second Life Guards were combined into a single regiment. A fellow officer married to an American steel heiress offered Coggins's father work as a secretary to his wife, and the family migrated to the United States, moving to Long Island, New York in the same year.[2]
[edit] Education
While his father served with the Life Guards Regiment in France during World War I, Coggins and his mother lived with family in Folkestone, Kent and he attended the Imperial Service College, a public school preferred by army families. On moving to New York, Coggins enrolled at Roslyn High School in Roslyn Heights; because of the differences between his military school in England and his New York city public school, Coggins found it somewhat difficult to adjust to American school life.[1]
After graduation from Roslyn in 1928 at age 17, Coggins enrolled in the New York City Grand Central School of Art[3] which was located above Grand Central Station; there he studied under such eminent painters as Edmund Greacen, George Pearse Ennis[4] and Wayman Adams.[5] In the early years, he painted constantly but not professionally; to support himself he painted advertising signs.[2] With a concentrated grounding in fine art techniques, Coggins graduated to the Art Students' League[6], where he studied from 1933 to 1934 under noted artist Frank DuMond.
[edit] Illustrator, Author & Artist
[edit] World War II
As a result of his father's military service and his early education in a military school, Coggins had always been interested in military subjects. By 1939, the world was on the brink of war as hostilities had already erupted in Europe. At that time, Coggins took a sampling of his war illustrations to Worthen Paxton, the then-art director of Life Magazine. Paxton commissioned Coggins to produce a drawing of an imaginary coastal invasion of England[7] for $250, a large sum at the time.[2] This was the first of many war time illustrations for LIFE.[8]
During the early 1940s, Coggins obtained more work producing war pictures for other magazines, including a series of double-page spreads for the controversial newspaper PM.[2] In addition, he received advertising commissions for companies such as Koppers,[9][10] Elco,[11] US Steel,[12] and Westinghouse.[13] Coggins also received commissions from the U.S. War Department for aircraft recognition charts.[14]
Because of the quality of his maritime illustrations, he was invited by publisher Doubleday to provide artwork for a planned children's book about the U.S. Navy. The author was Fletcher Pratt, a well known military historian, and the publisher sent Coggins to meet him. Their common interest in maritime history was to create a very fruitful association between the two men. The result of their first collaboration was Fighting Ships of the U.S. Navy, a volume that described in text and illustrated in full color every class of ship in the Navy.[2]
Coggins was called up for Army service and enlisted on April 8, 1943.[15] He was pulled from basic training before he could complete it, however, to work as an illustrator for YANK magazine, which was a U.S. Army weekly magazine "by the men ... for the men, in the service". He was introduced to the Commanding Officer and Editor of YANK, Colonel Franklin Fosberg, by Fletcher Pratt.[2] On May 20, he commenced work at the head office of YANK in New York, where he worked until his departure for Britain on October 14 of the same year.[15] Coggins became a naturalised citizen of the United States of America on August 19, 1943.[16]
He served as an artist for British YANK in London until August 8, 1945 and was finally discharged from the U.S. Army on November 3, 1945.[15] While in Britain, Coggins spent time on a Royal Navy convoy in the North Sea, witnessed the bombing of St. Lo, and flew over Berlin in a Lancaster bomber. He also spent time on a U.S. PT boat patrolling the beaches and made a trip into Britanny with an armored column.[1][2] Action from all these campaigns was illustrated in YANK magazine in double page spreads.[17] During his time in Britain, Coggins wrote two articles on rockets and weapons which were published in YANK; these articles clearly demonstrate his talents and early knowledge in those fields.[18][19]
[edit] Books and Magazine Covers
After returning from his war service, Coggins became a member of the faculty of Hunter College in New York where he taught watercolor from 1948 to 1953. As a result of his friendship with Fletcher Pratt, and his membership of Pratt's Trap Door Spiders club, Coggins became closely associated with notable science fiction writers such as L. Sprague de Camp, L. Ron Hubbard and Isaac Asimov. The contact with such visionaries, in addition to his exposure to the German V1 and V2 rockets in Europe, served to strengthen his growing interest in space travel, rockets and science fiction.[2]
During the 1950s Coggins illustrated covers for science fiction magazines, most notably Galaxy Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (refer to separate listing for details and images). In 1951 and 1952, he again collaborated with Fletcher Pratt on two classic books - Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles & Space Ships, and By Space Ship to the Moon. The books were released amidst a great wave of interest in space travel which swept the United States and the rest of the world in the 1950s; [2] they were published in several countries and translated into other languages. They made the prospect of space exploration seem a practical possibility,[20] and there are many NASA scientists today who retain fond memories of the influence these books had on their careers.[21]
Between the 1950s and the early 1980s Coggins wrote and/or illustrated at least 40 books on a wide range of marine, military, historical and educational themes. In 1962 he wrote Arms and Equipment of the Civil War which has become a major reference work for Civil War historians and which has been republished several times, most recently in 2004. In 1966 he wrote and illustrated The Horseman's Bible, which has sold at least half a million copies - a revised edition was published in 1984. His last book was Marine Painter's Guide which was first published in 1983; a new edition was published in 2005 (refer to separate listing for details and images).
[edit] Oil and Watercolor Paintings
Jack Coggins probably produced in excess of 550 oil and water colour paintings during his career.[1] His published books and illustrations led to many commissions for works of art from major corporations and institutions; however no catalogue of his art works is known to exist, and he kept few personal records of his works. A retrospective exhibition and sale of artworks found in Coggins's home after his death was held at the Wyomissing Institute of the Arts[22] in late 2006, consisting of about 300 previously unseen oils, watercolors and other printed materials.[23]
The majority of his paintings have a maritime theme in a realistic style and are executed in oils, for which he had a preference. However, he executed many works in watercolors and other media; examples of rural themes are common, and some works have a slightly impressionistic style.[24] His stated preference in art styles was "a direct splashy type of realistic painting" and he admired the so-called New Hope school of Redfield and Garber, with "no liking for 'modern art'".[1]
His paintings are displayed in numerous galleries, owned by the Philadelphia Maritime Museum, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, and many other institutions, as well as private collections.[2][1]
His original manuscripts and illustrations are part of the University of Southern Mississippi's Permanent Collection of outstanding authors and artists. He has been a member of the American Ordnance Assn., the U.S. Naval Institute, and advisor to the board of the Philadelphia Maritime Museum and the Reading Public Museum.[2][1]
[edit] Family
During his time as a member of the faculty of Hunter College in New York, Coggins met Alma Woods who was a fashion and photographic model at the time. They married in 1948 and moved to Berks County, Pennsylvania shortly afterwards. Coggins taught his wife to paint, and she had success as an artist in her own right; the couple holding annual joint exhibitions for many years.[1] Alma Woods also assisted Coggins in the planning, research and typing for many of his books, and he acknowledges her efforts with book dedications to her.[25]
Jack and Alma Coggins had no children; his only living relatives are several cousins and their families in Australia.
Coggins taught master art classes at the Wyomissing Institute of the Arts [22] for 45 years until his retirement in May 2001. He died at the age of 94, at his home in Berks County, Pennsylvania.[26]
[edit] Awards
In 1985, Jack Coggins received the Americanism Award from the Daniel Boone National Foundation and in 1989, he received the Purchase Award from the Mystic Maritime Gallery. He received the Rudolph Shaeffer Award in the International Maritime Exhibition from 1987 to 1990, the Pagoda Award from the Berks Arts Council [27] in 1995, and the Revolution Round Table Award [28].
In 2000 he was inducted to the International Association of Astronomical Artists Hall of Fame as a Living Legend and celebrated master of the genre of Space Art.[29]
[edit] Books Written and Illustrated by Jack Coggins
Link here to separate listing of books with links to cover images.
[edit] Books Illustrated by Jack Coggins
Link here to separate listing of books with links to cover images.
[edit] Magazine Covers Illustrated by Jack Coggins
Link here to separate listing of magazines with links to cover images.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g h Historical Review of Berks County, Volume 66, No. 2, Spring 2001 pages 76-82. Title: "Author-artist Jack Coggins". Interview and article by Robert F. Zissa. Robert F. Zissa is a retired journalist from the Reading Eagle.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Outre Magazine No. 23, 2001 pages 42-49. Title: "Jack Coggins". Interview and article by Ron Miller.
- ^ Grand Central School of Art.
- ^ George Pearse Ennis
- ^ Wayman Adams.
- ^ Art Students League
- ^ Life Magazine, July 15, 1940, Page 20.
- ^ Life Magazine Illustrations
- ^ Time Magazine January 25, 1943, Page 65.
- ^ Time Magazine March 8, 1943, Page 42-43.
- ^ Rudder Magazine, July 1942, Page 1.
- ^ Country Gentleman, September 1943, Page 48.
- ^ Popular Science Monthly, August 1942, Page 15.
- ^ Jack Coggins posters, hosted by the University of North Texas Libraries Digital Collections
- ^ a b c Military Personnel Records, National Personnel Records Center, National Archives, St. Louis, Missouri.
- ^ Naturalisation Records, Southern District Court, New York
- ^ Yank Magazine, British Edition, various illustrations
- ^ Yank Magazine, British Edition, January 9, 1944, pages 9-11.
- ^ Yank Magazine, British Edition, February 20, 1944, pages 22-23.
- ^ NASA analysis of Coggins designs
- ^ Space Art by Ron Miller, published by Starlog Magazine, 1978.
- ^ a b Wyomissing Institute of the Arts
- ^ "Institute Prepares Coggins Retrospective" Reading Eagle September 3, 2006 Entertainment Section, Page 50.
- ^ Samples of Jack Coggins Art.
- ^ Dedication in Marine Painter's Guide, published by Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1983, et al.
- ^ Jack Coggins's Obituary. Reading Eagle, February 2, 2006, Obituaries Section, page 15.
- ^ Berks Arts Council
- ^ Revolution Round Table Award
- ^ IAAA awards - International Association of Astronomical Artists Hall of Fame.
[edit] Other Print Source
- The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Donald H Tuck, 1982
[edit] External Links
- Jack Coggins at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Jack Coggins listing on Galenet
- Jack Coggins reference site and tribute - created by his family - includes images of many of his works.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Coggins, Jack Banham Coggins |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jack Coggins; J. Banham Coggins; |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American artist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 10, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London, England |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 30, 2006 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States |
