It’s the last gasp of summer before the kids go back to school and the days turn cooler. It’s time for summer vacation!
An artistic specialty of artist E.M. Jackson’s was painting women in poses that made them appear seductive and glamorous amidst architecturally authentic backgrounds. He certainly does so in this 1929 cover, where he captures the joy of an impeccably dressed young woman starting a sea voyage.
When it comes to vacations, some of want luxurious cruises or jaunts across the (other) continent. Others are happy with a few flies and a river full of promise. We wonder who will win this impasse: first class or striped bass?
It is Norman Rockwell’s belief, expressed graphically in his before-and-after pictures on this cover, that there is nothing like a day’s outing to get a family away from the noise and strain of the city, and into the noise and strain of the country. By the time they get back to those city scenes even dad’s cigar is drooping. No, you can’t beat a day in the country, although people keep right on trying.
Thornton Utz’s astonishing cover proves that somebody actually does get the last room in a motor court. Most motorists, only having had the experience of showing up just after it is gone, have come to think of the guy that does get it as a sort of myth, such as Hermes, the god with the wings on his derby.
The young women who posed for this painting by Thornton Utz were friends of Utz’s daughter, Wendy; Mrs. Utz posed them; Thornton gazed at them from across the street on a ladder; and the Sarasota, Florida, police amiably kept astonished motorists moving past the unlikely scene.
That wretched moment when a key family member realizes he doesn’t get to go on vacation with you. That face is almost sad enough to make you turn the car around and unpack that bathing suit (almost).
This idyllic cabin in the woods would be Walden-esque, if not for all the visitors. Artist Thornton Utz fears that if the departing Joneses see their home-town friends, the arriving Smiths, they’ll come back again. He isn’t pessimistic enough to fear that a third car is approaching beyond the bend in the road.
We don’t recommend piling kids into boats on the open road (in fact, it’s definitely illegal — maybe not in 1962, but definitely in 2017). We would like to point out that launchtime and lunchtime seem on a collision course in this George Hughes scene. Will the boat get into the water before little hands get into the picnic basket?
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