An Affair with Beauty - The Mystique of Howard Chandler Christy: Romantic Illusions Hardcover – March 3, 2019

Jim Head’s new book about Howard Chandler Christy is very thoroughly researched, well written, and nice to view. “Romantic Illusions” the second book of the trilogy has twice as many pages as his first book. The book can be appreciated on several different levels. First, there are color photos of Christy’s paintings. Jim did a great job identifying the models in many of Christy’s paintings. There are many black & white photos of Christy and his family, models, and friends. The book also contains an appendix of people who posed for Christy portraits and other paintings. Christy was the number one portrait artist of his era and painted six presidents, actors, and many famous socialites. The main portion of the book is a novelized history of Christy’s life told from his wife Nancy’s point of view. The book offers something for everyone interested in Howard Chandler Christy.

These two volumes (“The Magic of Youth” and “”Romantic Illusions”) paint a luminous biography of the Ohio artist Howard Chandler Christy and the beautiful “Christy Girls” who adorned his life and his works. We are drawn into his world and times as if we’re watching a dramatization of it. I look forward to reading the upcoming third volume.

I love HCC so this was a welcomed book. I have books one and two and am waiting for number three. It is told from the perspective of Nancy Palmer so it is her reminisces of their life together and what she remembered about what HCC told her about his life. Beautiful illustrations and photos. Good insight about a man most people have never heard of and he is an OHIAN!

Well researched and well written book. I am a longtime collector of Christy art and memorabilia a.d enjoyed this very much

Having just finished a bully of a great read in James Head’s “An Affair with Beauty: The Mystique of Howard Chandler Christy – Romantic Illusions”, I must say this second volume of the trilogy opens up new dimensions on the story of Christy’s life and how pivotal his early experience with the ugliness of war during the Spanish-American conflict was in his ultimate discovery of beauty as his true calling as an illustrator and portrait artist. Christy got his start as an artist correspondent for Scribner’s, Harper’s and Leslie’s Weekly magazines risking life and limb on the Cuban battlefields alongside one of his first celebrity subjects, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders. Repulsed by the horrors he witnessed here, he resolved to return to civilized life as an illustrator of beauty, inspired by his contemporaries like Charles Dana Gibson who gained great fame and fortune with his creation of the Gibson Girl. Following in his stead, Christy developed his own full color version in the Christy Girl, a mythical character of cutting edge fashion who would go on to encourage more young men to enter the field of battle during World War I, specifically with the eponymous recruiting poster, “Gee I Wish I Were a Man, I’d Join the Navy”. Eventually as publication printing technology improved making photographic reproduction possible, Christy moved away from illustration and turned to portraiture, becoming the leading Jazz Age recorder of American society luminaries. All along he was inspired and encouraged by his greatest muse and model, Nancy Palmer, his living Christy Girl who would eventually become his wife. How many of us are similarly influenced by our spouses as our greatest blessing in life?Reading James Head’s account of the evolution of his own adventure discovering Christy, I recalled my first encounter with the work of this under-documented giant of American art through the coffee table books available at my high school library. As a budding artist and would-be illustrator myself, I spent hours poring through the lavish pages of full color reproductions in “America’s Great Illustrators” by Susan E. Meyer wondering why Christy, as the foremost political portrait artist and creator of “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States” which hangs in the U.S. Capitol, was not honored with his own separate book on his life’s work. As the decade wore on and I began to pursue my passion in art school, I came to the realization that Christy’s brand of commercial art had seen its day and that illustration had become a difficult and competitive field to enter. Settling on graphic design, I ended up taking a different path into the 3D world of exhibitions, but I never forgot my first love rooted in the Golden Age of Illustration. Little did I know that a kindred spirit would soon make his own discovery at another hall of higher learning in the D.C. Area which would eventually spawn this wonderful trilogy that we now can add to the shelves alongside the other legends of artistic genius. Thanks to James Head, the spirit of Howard Chandler Christy has finally been released to the world for all to enjoy the magic of his romantic illusion and reality.

James Head, that rascal, has done it again. His second in a trilogy on the illusive and prolific American artist Howard Chandler Christie is a tease. He keeps telling us just enough about his subject to make us doubt and wonder where this man’s life is going to end up. Well, we know the VERY ending, but we don’t know what leads to it. In this, his second book, I find the writing even more vivid and engaging than in the first. Head really gets going with his subject and the painterly details he provides to take us on this roller coaster but delicious trip into and through the life of not only Christie but also his friends and other fellow artists in New York and abroad at the time. As a reader, you get right into the act with Head who has to be thanked for digging up all this interesting stuff which adds to one’s understanding of American history as much as the life of one prodigious and interesting painter and man. Can’t’ wait for the final book.