Art: Whitman Illustrated

Walter Whitman Jr., the gusty, grey poet of Brooklyn, N.Y., poured his “barbaric yawp” over the world in bushels of verse which he called Leaves of Grass. Last week Manhattan’s Associated American Artists’ Galleries put on view ten paintings, 20 drawings commissioned by the Book-of-the-Month Club for a $5 edition of Leaves of Grass. The illustrations were made by Lewis C. Daniel, 38, a tall, rangy, black-haired artist and teacher at Cooper Union who looks something like the men Walt Whitman apostrophized.

Artist Daniel warmed up on Walt by making 14 etchings for Song of the Open Road, lettering the text on copperplates for a limited edition which sold for $150 a copy. His Leaves of Grass illustrations he painted in oil, and drew with a greasy lithographer’s crayon, on paper. Full of movement, their swirling designs bursting with life, Daniel’s drawings would probably have pleased Walt Whitman. The bearded poet appeared in some of the pictures, striding along, flying through the air, loafing and inviting his soul. Salut au Monde! (see cut) showed him crying:

You whoever you are!

You daughter or son of England!

You of the mighty Slavic tribes and empires! you Russ in Russia!

You dim-descended, black, divine-sould’d African, large, fine-headed, nobly form’d, superbly destin’d, on equal terms with me! . . .

You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! . . . you Tartar of Tartary!

You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks! . . .

Toward you all, in America’s name,

I raise high the perpendicular hand, I make the signal,

To remain after me in sight forever,

For all the haunts and homes of men.