Russell Patterson

Russell Patterson was an American cartoonist, illustrator, and scenic designer best known for his Art Deco magazine illustrations that helped define the flapper look of the 1920s and 1930s. Born Russell H. Patterson on December 26, 1893, in Omaha, Nebraska, he moved to Montreal as a boy. After briefly studying architecture at McGill University, he drew cartoons for Montreal newspapers, including the strip *Pierre et Pierrette* for *La Patrie*. Rejected by the Canadian army during World War I, he relocated to Chicago, working as a catalog illustrator and doing interior design for department stores. A trip to Paris left him in debt, forcing a return to commercial art. He intermittently attended the Art Institute of Chicago from 1916 to 1919, and from 1922 to 1925, he distributed a mail-order art course, "The Last Word in Humorous Illustrations." A later attempt to sell fine art in the Southwest failed. Patterson's signature style—clean, geometric, and glamorous—graced magazines like *Life* and *Ballyhoo*, and he later contributed to Walter T. Foster's "How to Draw" books. He died on March 17, 1977.