George Brehm, born 30 September 1878, was an American visual artist best known for his illustrations for children's novels and covers for the Saturday Evening Post.
He was born in Anderson, Indiana. He has a brother, Worth Brehm, who would also go on to become an artist. Brehm started his art career at an early age. He would later tell an interviewer that, as a small boy, he would take slate shingles from construction sites around Noblesville and draw on them with chalk. His favorite subjects to copy were the female acrobats on circus posters around town. When the workers later found the shingles, George said they didn’t mind the theft, but that "They were appalled that a 13-year-old boy should draw a woman’s legs."
After graduating from Noblesville High School in 1898, Brehm took lessons from William Forsyth. He attended Indiana University for one year before beginning his career as an artist. His first real job was as a newspaper artist for the Indianapolis Star. While living in Indianapolis he began illustrating for Reader magazine, published by Bobbs-Merill.
He moved to New York to study at the Art Students League where he studied under John Henry Twachtman, Frank DuMond, and George Bridgman. Bridgman, constantly inebriated and chewing on a large black cigar, would lecture his students about the importance of mastering anatomy: "Don't think colour's going to do you any good. Or lovely compositions. You can't paint a house until it's built."
Studying at the League brought Brehm in contact with art directors from national magazines. Soon he was receiving commissions from Judge, Puck, Country Gentleman, Woman's Home Campanion, American Magazine, Colliers, Ladies Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, for whom created 11 covers for. It was a source of pride to Brehm that the Post never required him to submit preliminary sketches, although he made many of them for himself before embarking on a finished piece.
With a talent for painting children, Brehm was commissioned to illustrate children's books as well as magazine covers including illustrations for Booth Tarkington. He also received commissions from Octavus Roy Cohen, Marchette G. Chute, James Whitcomb Riley, Edgar Rice Burroughs and William Faulkner.
He married Katherine Bennet around 1912, and they couple had two children, Elizabeth and June. For the next fifty years, Brehm and his family would spend summers on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, where, today, most of his descendants reside.
He also illustrated advertisements for clients such as Arrow Collars, Coca-Cola and Texaco. In 1923, he was one of several judges at the first Miss America Pageant alongside Norman Rockwell.
George Brehm died in 1966, age 88 years old. In 2002, the Norman Rockwell Museum featured work by a handful of illustrators. George Brehm and his brother, Worth, were among the artists whose work was shown. Beginning with its first Brehm works donated in the 1930s, the Hamilton East Public Library now has a number of works by the Brehm brothers as well. Several of the Brehm works can be seen hanging in the Indiana Room today.
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