"A Doughboy with Shoemaker" by Herbert Morton Stoops

(1887-1948) Oil on canvas. Illustration for a WWII poster. Stoops was born on an Idaho ranch in 1887, grew up around men, both cowboys and Indians, who had lived in a bygone West of raw nature, massive buffalo herds, and Indian wars that, by the time of Stoop’s boyhood, had slipped away and became the past. At the age of 18, after graduating from college, he worked as an artist at the Examiner and Morning Call newspapers in San Francisco. More than 10 years later, in 1916, he studied at the Chicago Art Institute and worked as an artist at the Tribune. Stoop served as an artillery officer in 1917, and gained national attention with his drawings of soldiers on whom the burdens of war had fallen, and their resulting exhaustion, wounds and filth experienced in the trenches. Stoops went to New York City after the war, where he began the process of establishing himself as one of the most popular illustrators in the 1920s. His knowledge of the Old West and of war led to his success in illustrations for many magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Collier's and This Week, as well as an important, long-lasting 13-year association with the adventure publication Blue Moon Magazine. Stoop was well known for his illustrations for Frank B. Linderman’s 1930 publication American, the Life of a Great Indian.