THE NATIONAL SPORTING LIBRARY NEWSLETTER,
Fall 2001

INSPIRED ANIMATION:
The Art of Wesley Dennis
by Lisa Campbell, Associate Librarian

Misty of Chincoteague, King of the Wind, Justin Morgan Had a Horse, The Red Pony. Those titles convey vivid images of the most memorable horses from your childhood. Those enchanting horses in your mind's eye are the creations of Wesley Dennis.

Inspired Animation: The Art of Wesley Dennis opened on September 21 at the National Sporting Library. Presented by the Forrest E. Mars Sr. Exhibition Series, the showing will feature illustrations from some of the world's best known children's books.

Morgan and Reid Dennis acquired their father's extensive collection of sketches and paintings in 1966 when Wesley passed away. Since then, Morgan has kept the collection safely stored in his home as he served the community as the popular manager of the Middleburg Tennis Club. But at the suggestion of NSL patrons Beth and Wayne Gibbens, Morgan has made Wesley's drawings and paintings available for the Library's exhibit as a tribute to his father.

The artistic brilliance of Wesley Dennis (1903-1966) lay in his ability to accurately capture horses, dogs and people in moments of expression and motion. It was the quality of his work that caught the eye of author Marguerite Henry (1902-1997) when she was searching for the right illustrator for her first book, Justin Morgan Had a Horse.

Henry told the Falmouth Enterprise in a 1956 interview, "This artist saw beyond hide and hair and bone. You could see that he understood and loved animals, that he was trying to capture their spirit, personality and expression."

Viking Press published the book in 1945, which began over two decades of an enormously successful collaboration. Together, the two published 15 books.

The collaboration of Henry and Dennis on Misty of Chincoteague (1947) was so successful that it was recently named to the New York Times list of the Top 100 Children's Classics of the 20th century. The demand for the book has remained so strong, the publisher Simon & Schuster recently published a deluxe edition.

"These books seem to be as popular as ever," said Robin Bledsoe, a bookseller in Cambridge, Mass. "One thing that sets them apart is that they are very timeless - the story, the illustrations and the style of writing."

Misty developed a huge following that continues to this day. In the 1960s, the movie version was filmed at Chincoteage Island in Virginia. The annual "Pony Penning" day and auction of ponies at Chincoteague in July now draws over 50,000 visitors from all over the world.

King of the Wind (1948) by Henry and illustrated by Dennis, won the American Library Association's Newbery Medal Honor Award in 1949. Henry wrote the story of how a desert-bred Arabian stallion came to be one of the three important founding sires of today's Thoroughbred racehorse. Dennis's exotic and beautiful paintings and drawings captured the beauty, energy and speed of that stallion, the Godolphin Arabian.

King of the Wind was dedicated to Samuel Riddle, owner of the famous racehorse Man O' War, and to Dennis's good friend, Melville Church II, then president of The Virginia Horseman's Association.

Wesley and his wife Dorothy first came to Virginia at the invitation of Walter Chrysler of Chrysler Motors and the breeder of fine Thoroughbred racehorses. Chrysler lived in Warrenton. While on this visit, they met Church, his wife Emily Church (now Hutchison), and Russell Arundel, MFH of Warrenton Hunt. All became fast friends and were the ones to convince Wesley and Dorothy and their sons to move from New York to Warrenton in 1945.

Once settled in Virginia, Wesley and Dorothy were invited to hunt with Warrenton Hunt and Wesley played polo on local teams. The Dennis's 120-acre farm was soon home to horses, polo ponies, dogs, ducks and a pet crow named Charlie. He even had a pet emu mailed to him from Australia by friend King Stone.

He told the Fauquier Times-Democrat, "I probably spend a larger percentage of my income supporting useless pets and animals than anyone else I know."

Dennis and his friends King Stone and Russell Arundel played gin rummy and agreed to pool their winnings to finance a safari trip to Africa. The group eventually made the trip. Dennis and Russell's daughter Jocelyn Arundel gathered enough material to collaborate on a number of books in the early 1960s.

Emily Hutchison has many fond memories of Wesley. She recalled, "He was very energetic. He was completely enthusiastic about everything he did. I still have a number of lovely paintings that he did."

With the publication of Justin Morgan in 1945, Dennis was suddenly in great demand as an illustrator and remained so for the rest of his life. He illustrated, authored or co-authored over 150 books. Over ten million copies have been printed in ten languages. He illustrated calendars for prominent companies like Winchester Ammunition, Christmas cards for United Artists, countless magazine illustrations and advertisements. He was commissioned to paint numerous portraits of horses, dogs and people. He created illustrations for crossword puzzles, cartoon strips, playing cards and place mats for restaurants.

John Steinbeck, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Grapes of Wrath (1939), called upon Dennis to illustrate his book The Red Pony (1948). It too became a classic and was the best seller of any book Dennis illustrated.

The World Publishing Company hired him to illustrate a new edition of the enormously popular Black Beauty (1946). The editor writes in the introduction, "Wesley Dennis's love of horses and knowledge of them made him a natural choice as illustrator of this edition of Anna Sewell's most famous book. [She] would have loved his pictures for Black Beauty's story. They are so sympathetic and understanding in showing its events and adventures that you seem not only to see what happens to the horse but what he thinks and feels about it."

But Dennis's career was no accident. As a child, he fell deeply in love with horses. Both he and his brother Morgan shared a natural artistic talent. As a youngster, Wesley knew he wanted to live his life as an artist, surrounded by horses and other animals. And he possessed the drive to fulfill his destiny.

Wesley, Morgan and their sister, Lillian, were raised on a farm on the Cape Cod shores of Massachusetts. Henry told the Falmouth Enterprise of the event that shaped Dennis's future: "One Saturday afternoon he saw a newsreel in town, and that changed his whole life. Men in white breeches and helmets were whacking a ball as they rode galloping horses. It looked like fun -- but the way he said 'fun' to his mother over the supper table made it a big word shot through with speed, excitement, competition."

He began to dream of a life as an artist and polo player. His mother tried to map his future otherwise, but the restless teen already possessed an active and rather independent mind. Refusing to be tied to a mundane life, he quit high school at the age of 17. Taking drawings, he left home and presented the samples to the art departments of Filine's and Jordan Marsh and Co. He was immediately hired as a fashion artist, then later worked in the advertising department at the Boston Globe.

But tiring of commercial art, Dennis took the step to further his career in equestrian art. He wrote to renowned animal and landscape painter Lowes Dalbiac Luard, of France, asking for tutelage. Luard replied that he did not teach but would help him anyway. Dennis quit his job immediately and went to France.

Luard turned out to be a tough taskmaster, grilling Dennis to learn to draw from memory and with accuracy. He took Dennis to local butcher shops since the French included horsemeat on the menu. They spent hours studying the anatomy of horses, especially the muscles -- how they were attached and what they were used for.

Thus, combining his love and knowledge of horses--their personalities, their graceful movement, their zest for life--with the finely honed skills from France, Dennis's work stepped into a realm of its own with snapshot accuracy of movement and expression of the animals' physique and personality.

Leaving behind the commercial art world, Dennis staked himself out at the racetracks. He would sketch a winning horse and present it to the excited owner hoping to secure a commission. The strategy often succeeded and he produced a number of paintings of winning Thoroughbreds. Knowing that Bing Crosby loved racing, he produced a whole portfolio of drawings and shipped them off hoping Crosby might buy one. Crosby was so impressed by the quality of the work, he bought the whole lot. (Several years later, Dennis visited Crosby and saw all of the drawings on the wall in his bar.)

Then in the early 1940s, Dennis and his new bride, Dorothy Boggs, were vacationing in Santa Fe, New Mexico to gather material for a book idea he called "Brighty of the Grand Canyon." There, he met May Massee, an editor of children's books. It was this chance meeting that put Dennis on the path to success and fame.

Returning East, Dennis approached Massee to see if any of her authors could use an illustrator. Instead she suggested that he write his own book to illustrate. Thus, Dennis's first book Flip hit the market in 1941. Flip is a beginner-reader story of a frisky colt who wishes to jump a stream like his mother. It was so successful he was asked to do a sequel which he entitled Flip and the Cows.

Meanwhile, Marguerite Henry, a young writer, presented a manuscript for publication to publishers Wilcox and Follet. But Henry still needed an illustrator for the book to be entitled Justin Morgan Had A Horse. She viewed samples from a few of their illustrators but rejected them as not good enough.

She had hoped for Will James or C.W. Anderson, but neither was available. She went to the local library to browse through children's books for a suitable illustrator. When she came across Flip, she knew she had found the right one.

Inspired Animation: The Art of Wesley Dennis will be open through November.