Biographies of 4 Popular Postcard Artists


Clarence Lawson Wood
Clarence came from a distinguished artistic family. He studied at the Slade Art School and Calderons School of animal Painting. He was also a member of The London Sketch Club. As well as being a postcard artist, he drew for adverts and calendars and his work was featured in many magazine of the 1920 and 1930s, such as ‘The Sketch’. He is mainly known for his ‘Grandpops cheeky monkeys’ and pre-historic series of cave men and women and parrots. He also produced comics, military and cats. He was a great friend of Tom Browne and died in 1957.

Donald McGill
He was the father of the saucy postcard with his buxom characters, cute kids and double entendres. His cards have been banned by magistrates and town councils and in 1906 a shopkeeper was fined £20 for selling a McGill card. McGill was prosecuted for forgery after he painteda pound not on a card.

Charles Dana Gibson
He was President of the Society of Illustrators during World War I and directed propoganda designs for the US War Effort. After the ware he became owner and editor of Life Magazine. Most of his postcards were acutely observed, humorous situations of Edwardian middle class, especially their courtship rituals. He was of course, more famous for his ‘Gibson Girl’, modelled on his wife Irene Langhorne, sister of Lady Astor, though Camille Clifford often posed for him too. She is the one that usually takes the credit as she was known as ‘The Gibson Girl’.

Clare Victor Dwiggins
“Dwig” was born in Wilmington, Ohio in 1873. He quit school in 1889 and went to work in an architects office. He made a career move in 1897, taking a job as a cartoonist on The St Louis Dispatch, earning two dollars a week. After a few years he worked only in the winter and speent the summer as a hobo and he started a travelling college and became known as the professor of freehand drawing. Dwig was later hired by the estate of Mark Twain to depict the lives of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. He first found fame on postcards by producing eight drawn views for a book called Whimlets for the Henry T Coats Co, which are very rare cards. Raphael Tuck became interested in this work and published 17 different series of them, including ‘Smiles’, ‘School Days’ and adverts for Butterkrust Bread.

Article reprinted from 'Postcard World' with the permission of The Postcard Club of Great Britain