Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Mystery Signatures

Every now and then I stumble across a signature on a piece of artwork that defies recognition. Mervyn Suart was one that I did manage to decipher but some remain a mystery. The picture above is one example. I've no idea whose signature that is in the bottom right corner.

Similarly, this front cover for the Jack and Jill Annual 1958...

... which is signed along the side of the book. I've scanned and rotated the signature below.

Wadazo? Let me know if your guess is better than mine.

3 comments:

  1. The Look and Learn looks like Bertram- can't make out the initial.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The sign on the "Look And Learn" cover (The Great War) is by Italian artist Achille Beltrame (1871-1945).
    That image was an old cover for an Italian weekly magazine "La Domenica del Corriere".

    ---Fortunato Latella (Italian comic collector and member of ANAFI)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Looks like we have an i.d. for the first signature. This is the first time I've come across a reprint cover on Look and Learn that isn't a classical painting (the second issue, for instance, reproduced a painting by Sir Alfred Munnings). Just goes to show: the more you explore these old magazines, the more interesting it gets. Thanks, Fortunato.

    One down, one to go. The second artist is also likely to be Italian and a member of the Creazioni D'Ami studio. Or more likely a pal of Rinaldo's to whom he passed on a commission. This is the 1958 annual, published in around September 1957, but the artwork would have been painted in 1956 when D'Ami's team was still quite small. So... who was active in 1956 and maybe had a reputation for drawing children other than Carla Ruffinelli?

    ReplyDelete

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