Fortune magazine -part 1

Fortune is an American multinational business magazine headquartered in New York City. The publication was founded by Henry Luce in 1929. The magazine competes with Forbes and Bloomberg Businessweek in the national business magazine category and distinguishes itself with long, in-depth feature articles.

The magazine regularly publishes ranked lists, including the Fortune 500, a ranking of companies by revenue that it has published annually since 1955. The magazine is also known for its annual Fortune Investor’s Guide. 

At a time when business publications were little more than numbers and statistics printed in black and white, Fortune was an oversized 11”×14" using creamy heavy paper, and art on a cover printed by a special process. Fortune was also noted for its photography, featuring the work of Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel Adams, and others.

During the Great Depression, the magazine developed a reputation for its social conscience. From its launch in 1930 to 1978, Fortune was published monthly. In January 1978, it began publishing biweekly. In October 2009, citing declining advertising revenue and circulation, Fortune began publishing every three weeks. As of 2018, Fortune is published 14 times a year.

This is part 1 of 6-part series on Fortune magazine:

c1929 Concept sketch for the first Fortune cover, by T.M. Cleland

1929 Prototype issue September 1929 Volume 1 Number 0 
cover by Stark Davis

Winthrop Stark Davis (1885-1950) was born in Boston, Massachusetts.  He subsequently lived and worked in Chicago, where he was affiliated with several arts institutions including the Palette and Chisel Club.  Davis exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1924 and at the Chicago Galleries Association in 1930, winning prizes in both shows.

During the 1920s and 1930s Stark Davis’s illustrations appeared on covers of the Ladies’ Home Journal, and in numerous advertisements, and from 1927 to 1929, Davis’s artistic and colourful “Bird Series” of advertisements for Lincoln automobiles ran in popular magazines such as Country Life and Home and Garden.

1930 The first issue of Fortune, February 1930

1930 April

1930 May, cover by Walter Buehr

Walter Buehr was born in Chicago in 1897. After high school he attended several different art schools including the Art Students League of New York (where he later taught), the Detroit School of Design, the Philadelphia School of Industrial Arts, the Art Students League, and he also studied art in Europe.

1930 June, cover by Walter Buehr

1930 July

1930 August, cover by Walter Buehr

1930 September, cover by Peter Helck

Peter Helck (1893 - 1988) studied in New York. He was an illustrator who specialised in depicting racing cars. He estimated that he had produced more than 600 sketches, drawings and paintings during his career.

1930 October, cover by Walter Buehr

1930 November, cover by Charles Dewey

Charles Melville Dewey (1849–1937) was an American tonalist painter. Confined to his bed from his twelfth to his seventeenth year by a hip disease, he formed the poetic conception of nature that appears in his pictures. He studied in the schools of the National Academy of Design, New York, and in Paris under Carolus-Duran, whom he assisted to paint a ceiling in the Louvre. In 1878 he returned to New York. His landscapes in oil and watercolour are in many public galleries and private collections in the United States.

1930 December, cover by Ronald McLeod

Ronald Norman McLeod (1897 - 1977) was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was raised in Chicago where he attended the University of Chicago for two years before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Engineers for service in World War I. Upon his return from France in 1919, he started his career as an illustrator for a Chicago advertising agency and, to earn some extra money, playing piano for radio station KYW, Chicago. Wanting more professional independence, he and his wife moved to Paris in early 1925.

1931 January

1931 February

1931 March, cover by Norman Reeves

Norman Reeves was an American surrealist and illustrator, whose illustrations have been noted in the magazine "Architectural Forum: The Magazine of Building”. Reeves created many covers for Fortune magazine in his lifetime.

1931 April, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

Ernest Hamlin Baker (1889-1975) Known for the 391 “journalistic portraits” he created for Time Magazine from 1939 to 1956 and the thirteen Fortune Magazine covers that led to his work for Time, Ernest Hamlin Baker was a self-taught painter and illustrator who created a new style of portraiture. He also known for the propaganda posters he designed during World Wars I and II.

1931 May, cover by Walter Buehr

1931 June, cover by Fred Ludekens

Fred Ludekens (1900-1892) was born in Hueneme, California. Although he had no formal training in art, he found work as a billboard painter. He joined the advertising agency of Lord & Thomas in 1931, and transferred to the company’s New York City office in 1939. He returned to San Francisco in 1945. Ludekens worked in a variety of media, often depicting rural scenes such as fruit ranches, coastal scenes, and the Indians of the Southwest. He produced story, article and cover illustrations for many magazines.

1931 July, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1931 August

1931 September

1931 October

1931 November, cover by Walter Buehr

1931 December

1932 January, cover by Thomas Cleland

Thomas Maitland Cleland (1880 – 1964) was an American book designer, painter, illustrator, and type designer. Born in Brooklyn, New York  Cleland studied at the Artist Artisan Institute in Chelsea, New York. In 1929, he was hired on as art director of Fortune magazine.

1932 February, cover by Paolo Garretto

Paolo Garretto (1903 Naples - 1989) There was hardly a noteworthy American magazine that had not published Garretto’s work at one time. There were virtually no French, Italian, English, and German poster hoardings or kiosks on which his advertisements did not regularly appear. His airbrushed caricature epitomised Deco styling. During the Twenties and Thirties he was a master of international advertising design and editorial art.

Garretto’s fame in the United States was due to the regularity with which his work appeared in Fortune, Time, Vogue, and The New Yorker, but even more directly owing to his work in the original Vanity Fair.

1932 March, cover by Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera (1886 – 1957) was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato. He was an active communist, and the husband of painter Frida Kahlo. His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Renaissance. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among others in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. In 1931, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

1932 April, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1932 May, cover by Constantin Alajalov

Constantin Alajálov (1900-1987) was an Armenian-American painter and illustrator. He was born in Rostov-on-Don, Russia and emigrated to New York City in 1923, becoming a US citizen in 1928. Many of his illustrations were covers for such magazines as The New Yorker, The Saturday Evening Post, and Fortune. He also illustrated many books, including the first edition of George Gershwin's Song Book. His works are in New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

1932 June, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1932 July, cover by Irvin Metzl

Irvin Metzl (1889 - 1963) was born in Chicago in 1899 to Ignatz and Bertha (Kohn) Metzl, Jewish immigrants from Bohemia. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He created several posters for a series commissioned by the Chicago Transit Authority in the early 1920s. He was President of the Society of Illustrators in 1956-57. In recognition of his contribution to stamp design he was one of the inaugural recipients of the Benjamin Franklin Award in 1960.

1932 August, cover by Paolo Garretto

1932 September, cover by F.V. Carpenter

1932 October, cover by A.C. Webb

Alonzo C. Webb (1888 – 1975) was an American etcher, architect, painter and illustrator born in Nashville, Tennessee. From 1907 to 1909, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1912 to 1913 he studied architecture at the University of Illinois. He later attended the Art Students League of New York  and worked with Dan Barber, a New York architect. Around 1920, he started etching and his work began appearing frequently in the French weekly L’Illustration. During the 1920s and 1930s Webb lived and worked in both France and the United States. In the late 1930s he moved to London, where he died in 1975.

1932 November, cover by Irvin Metzl

1932 December, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1933 January, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1933 February, cover by F.V. Carpenter

1933 March, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1933 April, cover by Walter Buehr

1933 May, cover by Roger Duvoison

Roger Duvoison (1904 - ?) was born in Switzerland into a family with a strong orientation towards the arts. His father was an architect and his godmother was a famous enamel painter. He was recruited into designing textiles which took him to Paris. In 1927, he was recruited by an American textile firm in New York to come and work for them. He made a commitment to relocate for a minimum of four years and he and and his wife moved to New York. He found fame as author and illustrator of numerous children's books.

1933 June, cover by Paolo Garretto

1933 July

1933 August, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1933 September, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

Antonio Petruccelli (1907 - 1994) was born in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He developed his artistic talent at an early age and began his career as a textile designer. After winning several House Beautiful cover illustration contests, he became a freelance illustrator in 1932; subsequently his work appeared on the covers of Fortune, The New Yorker, Collier’s, Today and House Beautiful magazines. The art director for Fortune, Francis Brennan, said of Petruccelli, “Tony was Mr. Versatility for Fortune. He could do anything, from charts and diagrams to maps, illustrations, covers and caricatures.” Throughout his life, Petruccelli won many important design awards including a U.S. Postage stamp for the American Steel Industry’s 100th anniversary and a Bicentennial medal for the state of New Jersey.

1933 October, cover by Norman Reeves

1933 November

1933 December, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

1934 January, cover by Ernest Hamlin Baker

1934 February, cover by Arnold Hall

1934 March, cover by Victor Beales

1934 April, cover by Antonio Petruccelli

1934 May, cover by cover by F.V. Carpenter