Virgil Finlay Named To Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame

H. P. Lovecraft by Virgil Finlay

H. P. Lovecraft by Virgil Finlay

Renowned fantasy artist Virgil Finlay is a 2015 inductee to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame.

The other 2015 inductees are Walter Baumhofer, Bernard D’Andrea, Will Eisner, Ted and Betsy Lewin, Patrick Oliphant, and Arthur Szyk.

Virgil Finlay is regarded by many as the finest line artist in the sf/fantasy genre. He worked from 1936 until his death in 1971 illustrating pulp fiction and astrology magazines, and also the Hearst Sunday supplement The American Weekly.

He won the 1953 Hugo Award for Best Interior Illustrator, and in 1996 was voted a Retro Hugo as Best Professional Artist of 1945. Finlay was added to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.

Last year’s World Fantasy Con, co-chaired by Peggy Rae Sapienza and Michael J. Walsh, honored the centennial of Virgil Finlay’s birth. Over 100 Finlay originals were displayed in the art show. And The Collectors’ Book of Virgil Finlay, compiled by Robert Weinberg, Doug Ellis and Robert T. Garcia, also was unveiled at the con.

TCBOVF_Cover

10 thoughts on “Virgil Finlay Named To Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame

  1. It’s well deserved. Finlay was a genius with pen and ink.

  2. Isn’t it just? I’ve been considering selling some plasma to get that book.

  3. If I had any plasma left, I’d loan you some. I can’t scroll past it without stopping to look every time!

  4. Click on the link and check out the “sample” reproductions on the publisher’s webpage if you really want to stare! I particularly like the juxtaposition of Finlay’s originals with the actual magazine covers . . .

  5. I was hoping the Finlay book would have made the Related Book category on the Hugo ballot, but we all know how that turned out. Perhaps it wouldn’t have anyway, given its cost and somewhat limited distribution, but it is indeed a lovely book. (A side reminiscence: back in either 1968 or ’69, the SF Book Club, for which Finlay had been doing some work, donated some Finlay drawings to the worldcon art auction. Minimum bids were like $10-15, but unfortunately even that was too much for me at the time…)

  6. I think blaming the puppies for his book not making it is more than a bit steep. Looking through his art one wonders how he would garner votes at all. The man was obviously a sexist pig bent on depicting women in poses that resulted in controversy akin to what happened (two years ago) with the SFWA’s magazine cover:
    http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/sfwa-bulletin-jean-rabe-resigned-sexism/

    Of course that means most of us puppies probably like the art which is good.

  7. GK, I don’t think the cover you are referring to would have been a problem for anyone in 1965–certainly not for me. In 2015, it’s at best trite. And if Finlay were alive today, he would still be the better artist, in my opinion; no matter what he was drawing, it would be interesting and original. While I don’t blame the Puppies for the Finlay book not making the Hugo list–as Bob Roehm says, it’s very expensive and had a very limited distribution–I am sad to see that it isn’t on there. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we? There are plenty of Puppy-related threads to talk about Puppy issues on.

  8. Oh I like the art. Its nice, but blaming us for keeping it off or even insinuating the same as _someone else_ did in this thread is several orders of magnitude dumb.

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