I stumbled on this excellent article about Virgil Finlay by one of his biggest fans...
By GERRY DE LA REE
When Virgil Finlay
died at age 56 on January 18, 1971, he
left behind him thirty-five years of fan-
tasy and science-fiction artwork — and a
reputation as the most meticulous pulp
magazine illustrator of his generation.
Most of the readers of Starlog were
not around in 1935 when Finlay sold his
first professional drawings to Weird
Tales magazine. Within only a year he
had established himself as being the
finest black-and-white illustrator in his
chosen field.
His use of the stipple and cross-hatch
techniques, and an ability to enhance
stories with his unique drawings quickly
rocketed him to the top. Over the years
many artists would attempt to duplicate
Finlay's techniques, but none ever at-
tained the quality that was the trade-
mark of Finlay's finest efforts.
Even Frank Kelly Freas, ten-time win-
ner of the "Hugo" as science-fiction's
top illustrator, admitted in a recently
published book of his artwork that his
one experiment with Finlay's stipple
technique — that of using small, individ-
ually placed dots of ink to create deli-
cate shading — earned him a new respect
for Virgil's drawings. "It became very
clear to me that 1 would never give Fin-
lay any competition. Foosh!— what a
lot of work all those blasted little dots
were!
As Finlay himself explained his work,
black-and-white drawings were done in
a variety of techniques, employing pen,
brush, spatter, lithographic pencils,
sponges, and knives on a variety of
paper; the majority were done on
scratchboard. His color work was gen-
erally done in oil color thinned with
quick drying siccative, and sometimes
combinations of ink, watercolor,
gouache, and oil.
The stipple technique, which he re-
fined throughout his career, he ex-
plained this way: "Using a 290 litho-
graphic pen (which has an extremely
fine point), I dip the pen in India ink
and allow only the liquid to touch the
drawing surface, which is normally
scratchboard. The point is then wiped
clean and re-dipped for the next dot."
Obviously, this was a time-consuming
operation. Today many artists obtain a
similar effect with the use of stipple-
surface paper. But study under a magni-
fying glass will quickly determine one
method from the other.
Even in the final year of his life, when
pain often limited his time at the draw-
ing board, Finlay claimed he was able to
make use of the stipple without the aid
of a magnifying glass. During most of
his career, his magazine drawings were
done to the exact size they were to be
published at. Attempts by some publish-
ers to enlarge these small drawings have
resulted in ghastly distortions of his
work.
Finlay's excellent knowledge of anat-
omy resulted in human and animal
figures that seemed to literally leap off
the page. He combined alien creatures,
weird settings, and a vivid imagination
with an ability to accurately illustrate
scenes from almost any story. His color
work was not always as successful as his
black and white drawings, but he still
created many outstanding magazine
covers. If you own a Finlay cover orig-
inal you have a collector's item— there
just are not that many in existence.
But many of the artist's most detailed
drawings were all but ruined by the
cheap pulp paper used by the fiction
magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. And
the rates paid by the magazines were
distressingly low.
During the last decade of his life,
Finlay moved to higher paying markets
such as Doubleday and various astrol-
ogy magazines, contributing some sixty
drawings to the former and almost 200
interiors and covers to the latter. During
this period he continued to work for
most of the few science-fiction maga-
zines still appearing, but made use of a
simple line style of drawing that was far
less time-consuming than the techniques
employed during the peak years of his
fantasy career. He saved the fine pen
and ink work for the better paying
publishers.
Over the years, Finlay illustrated
stories by most of the top writers in the
field, including H. P. Lovecraft, Clark
Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, Edmond
Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, C. L.
Moore, Seabury Quinn, Jack William-
son, Carl Jacobi, Robert E. Howard,
August Derleth, A. Merritt, George
Allan England, John Taine, H. Rider
Haggard, H. G. Wells, Talbot Mundy,
Arthur Conan Doyle, Murray Leinster,
Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Collier, E.
F.Benson, Manly Wade Wellman, Stan-
ley G. Weinbaum, James Blish, Frank
Belknap Long, L. Ron Hubbard, Jack
Vance, Leigh Brackett, Hay Cummings,
Ray Bradbury, John D. MacDonald, E.
E. Smith, Ben Bova, Arthur C. Clarke,
Otis Adelbert Kline, Theodore Stur-
geon, L. Sprague de Camp, Fletcher
Pratt, Edgar Allan Poe, and even a chap
named William Shakespeare. The list is
almost endless.
During his career Finlay appeared in
virtually every major science-fiction or
fantasy magazine published. For Weird
Tales he did some 220 interiors and 20
covers. For Famous Fantastic Mysteries
he turned out more than 200 black and
white drawings and 27 covers. Other
major markets in the 1940-60 period
were Thrilling Wonder Stories, Amaz-
ing Stories, Fantastic Adventures,
Startling Stories, Fantastic Novels, Fan-
tastic Story Quarterly, Galaxy, If, Fan-
tastic, and Fantastic Universe.
Despite the more than 2,800 drawings
and paintings Finlay sold during his
career, he often fell upon difficult if not
hard times financially. If payment was
low in the early days, it didn't seem to
improve that much in the two decades
that followed.
Virgil Warden Finlay was born on
July 23, 1914, in Rochester N.Y. His
father, Warden Hugh Finlay, was at one
time a successful woodworker, but like
so many in the Depression period of the
1930s he found himself hard-pressed to
support a family. He died at forty years
of age, leaving his widow, Ruby,
daughter Jean, and son Virgil.
Some of Finlay's earliest sketches and
drawings, dating back to 1930 and 1931,
are signed Finlay Jr. or Warden Virgil
Finlay.
Although he did some artwork for
high school yearbooks, probably his
first professionally published illustra-
tion was on the dust wrapper for a 1933
book of prize-winning high school
poetry. The book, Saplings, featured on
its front cover a drawing called, "My
Mirror's Melody," which shows a
young man playing a violin to a girl in a
wooded setting. While the signature
plainly reads "Virgil Warden Finlay"
the caption under it reads "By Warden
Virgil Findlay ," with the "D" added to
his last name. This picture was awarded
second prize in the Charles M. Higgins
Award for drawing with black ink in the
Art Division of the Scholastic Competi-
tion of 1933. At that time Finlay was a
senior at John Marshall High in Roches-
ter.
Finlay invariably ranked No. 1 in fan polls conducted to
determine the most popular artist in the fantasy field), so did
Gerry's admiration. In 1947, he bought his first Finlay
original at a convention in Philadelphia. It was love at first
sight. In 1951, he began writing the artist, purchasing original
drawings for $2 to $10.
The two became "pen-pals, " with their regular letters con-
tinuing for the next fourteen years. In 1965, de la Ree finally
visited the veteran artist in Finlay's West bury. New York
home. The ailing artist and the long-time fan became fast
friends and, during the final years of Finlay's life, relished
their mutual interest and love for fantasy artwork.
Following Finlay's death, his loyal fan and friend assem-
bled over 120 original pieces of artwork and published a
tribute to the late artist: The Book Of Virgil Finlay. // is
published in paperback by Flare Books.
While in high school, the small but
well-built Finlay excelled in athletics; he
dabbled in art, poetry, and reading of
such magazines as Amazing Stories and
Weird Tales. He continued to refine his
artistic skills after his school days, but it
was not until mid-1935 that he made the
decision to submit some samples of his
work to Farnsworth Wright, then editor
of Weird Tales.
Until this time, most pulp magazines,
including Weird Tales, had concen-
trated on publishing garish covers to
lure customers, while most of the in-
terior drawings were on the drab side.
Finlay's new approach to fantasy art
won favor with Wright, and his first
work appeared in the December, 1935
issue.
Between the time Wright purchased
Finlay's initial drawings and the time
they appeared in print, the editor com-
missioned Finlay to do twenty-five
drawings for Shakespeare's A Midsum-
mer Night's Dream. Wright produced
this as a 35-cent paperback. It was a
financial flop, although the edition has
become a collector's item .
As the 1936 issues of Weird Tales
rolled off the presses, Finlay's artwork
began to draw praises from readers and
authors alike. It prompted three of the
magazine's top writers, Lovecraft, C.A.
Smith, and Seabury Quinn to strike up
correspondences with Finlay.
Finlay was now a regular in the pages
of Weird Tales. In November, 1937, he
received a letter from A. Merritt sug-
gesting that he might care to join the
staff of The American Weekly, a large-
sized newspaper supplement edited by
Merritt and published by William Ran-
dolph Hearst. Naturally, Finlay was
already familiar with Merritt's popular
fantasies such as
The Ship of Ishtar,
The Moon Pool,
Dwellers in the
Mirage, and others.
So Virgil pulled up stakes in
Rochester and moved to New York
City.
Some of Finlay's most spectacular
drawings would appear in The Amer-
ican Weekly, but his tenure there was a
rocky one. Unaccustomed to meeting
the deadlines of a weekly publication,
still trying to do work for Weird Tales,
and getting used to life in the big city
almost unhinged him. He went through
a series of firings and hirings at the
Weekly, but he was Merritt's boy and in
the long run he did, by his own count,
some 845 pieces of art for this publica-
tion. During his period as a staffer,
prior to World War II, and as a free-
lancer from 1946 to 1951, he drew
everything from the front cover to small
spots on inside pages.
When Famous Fantastic Mysteries,
based in New York, made its debut in
1939, Finlay quickly found another out-
let. During the 1939-42 period, science-
fiction magazines sprung up like weeds
and Finlay did work for most of them.
The war killed off all but the heartiest of
the newcomers.
By the late 1940s, pulp magazines in
general were fast disappearing. Some
survived as digest-sized publications. As
the decade of the 1950s started, new
magazines such as Galaxy, If, Fantastic,
Other Worlds, and Fantastic Universe
appeared, and Finlay had some new
markets.
Finlay married his childhood friend,
Beverly Stiles, on November 16, 1938,
and they settled into a small apartment
in Brooklyn. Virgil entered the Army in
June, 1943, and served in the Pacific
area before the conflict ended. He spent
the first two years in the States. After a
brief stay in Hawaii, by which time he
was a corporal, he was shipped to
Okinawa in April, 1945. He attained the
rank of Sgt. (T-4)andsaw some action.
While in service he did only two draw-
ings for science-fiction magazines. Both
were done while he was in Hawaii. One
was used in the October, 1946, issue of
Famous Fantastic Mysteries with C. L.
Moore's story "Daemon", and the
other in the Fall, 1946 Thrilling Wonder
for "Call Him Demon", aKuttnerstory
printed under his Keith Hammond
pseudonym.
In 1948 the Finlays moved from
Brooklyn to Levittown on Long Island.
Their daughter, Lail, was born the
following year. In 1950 they purchased
a new home in Westbury. Some 20 years
later, Finlay would tell me that this was
the wisest investment he ever made.
While not exactly a recluse, Finlay
stayed quite close to his Westbury
home. He did not attend conventions
and mix with his fellow S.F. artists and
authors. He was proud of much of his
work, but no doubt discouraged at his
seeming inability to gain recognition
outside the fantasy field. A dedicated
family man, he was often forced to
overcome frustrating periods of finan-
cial difficulties to make ends meet. He
had grown up with the pulp magazines
and would no doubt have been fairly
content to stay there had not the pulps
themselves disappeared, his main source
of income going with them.
To family and close friends, Finlay
answered to the name of "Chub", with
which he had been tagged as a youth. As
early as 1933, Finlay sported a mous-
tache; it is present in two of three self-
portraits I have in my collection. In later
years he wore a full beard.
Finlay's closest friend in the science-
fiction field was author Henry Kuttner.
But this was in the pre-war days. When
Kuttner married C. L. Moore in 1940,
Virgil and Beverly were present. After
the Kuttners moved to California,
Finlay carried on a bulky correspon-
dence with Henry, whose death in 1958
was a blow to the artist and the science-
fiction field in general.
Finlay was one of the few magazine il-
lustrators who made a genuine effort to
have editors return his originals. Even
so, many of the drawings were never
returned. Some were retained by the
editors, some were given to authors, and
still more were donated to the various
S.F. conventions as auction material.
Some of the "missing" Finlay orig-
inals were uncovered in 1975 by art col-
lector Gene Nigra, who managed to pur-
chase most of the estate of the late
Hannes Bok, who had been one of
Finlay's "rivals" in the 1940 period at
Weird Tales. Bok, who had died in
1964, had left a number of his own
paintings with a friend. When Nigra
went through the mass of material held
by Clarence Peacock, he was stunned to
find Finlay's originals from A Midsum-
mer Night's Dream as well as other
Finlay drawings that Bok had apparent-
ly picked up during his visits to the of-
fices of the magazines years before.
Most of Bok's friends seemed to
believe he was disdainful of Finlay's
work, but the location of this cache of
drawings would seem to indicate other-
wise.
During the 1940s, Famous Fantastic
Mysteries published three portfolios of
Finlay's drawings from that magazine.
Another portfolio of some of his finest
illustrations appeared in 1953.
His first fantasy dust-wrapper was
for H. P. Lovecraft's The Outsider And
Others (1939), the first book published
by Arkham House. Because he was so
busy at the time, Finlay used a montage
of his Weird Tales drawings for the
jacket. Years later both the book and
jacket would command high prices in
the used book market.
He illustrated a few books such as
Roads by Seabury Quinn and The Ship
of Ishtar by Merritt, but he never made
a serious dent in the pocketbook field,
which today is both the showcase and
highest-paying market for many il-
lustrators.
Early in 1969 Finlay underwent exten-
sive surgery for cancer, but had im-
proved sufficiently by June to attend the
wedding of his daughter. He resumed
his work for Astrology, but during the
time remaining to him he found it dif-
ficult to meet his deadlines. Although in
pain much of the time, he retained his
sharp sense of humor. During this
period he began selling off many of the
original drawings and paintings he had
retained over the years.
Late in 1970 he was hospitalized with
a liver ailment. He returned home in late
December and 1 recall talking with him
on the phone on Christmas day. A
planned trip to Long Island to visit him
in early January never materialized for
me because of car trouble. Finlay suf-
fered a final setback only two weeks
later and died on January 18, 1971.
When he died of cirrhosis of the liver,
an autopsy revealed that the cancer had
spread to other organs.
In the months following his death, I
printed a portfolio of his previously un-
published drawings. Most of these dated
back to his pre-professional days. But
one, a fine drawing in Finlay's best
style, had been done in 1964 for a pro-
posed edition of J. R. R. Tolkien's The
Hobbit. While a fine drawing, author
Tolkien nixed the proposed volume
because Finlay's interpretation of the
story differed from his own.
Later in 1971, Donald Grant of
Rhode Island published the first hard-
cover book of Finlay's art. Only a third
of the book contained drawings, how-
ever. There was also a biography of
Finlay by Sam Moskowitz and a check-
list of the artist's published work.
In 1975 I published the hardcover
edition of The Book of Virgil Finlay,
which contained some 120 drawings
from my own collection. The book sold
out before publication, and in 1976
Avon Books reprinted it in a paperback
edition. Grant did a second book, Virgil
Finlay's Astrology Sketch Book, which
was edited by Mrs. Finlay. Other port-
folios, some of them pirated from the
magazine pages, have appeared in re-
cent year s.
Finlay originals, which once sold for
$10 or $20, today command prices in the
hundreds of dollars. As is so often the
case, the artist's work increased in value
after his death.
The continued appearance of Finlay
books and portfolios has given a new
generation of fantasy fans the oppor-
tunity to admire and study his work. He
is gaining a new following, and de-
servedly so.
