The Past
7
thePeorian.com
Revere started at Bradley Poly-
technic Institute in 1918 where he
applied himself to all the music
and art department events. He
made regular illustration con-
tributions to the school news-
papers and yearbooks. He said
his Bradley years were the most
glorious of his life and Bradley
symbols and logos appeared in
his art whenever his was illustrat-
ing with a college theme.
In 1919, he entered the Art
Institute of Chicago. As his art
talent for commercial illustra-
tion flourished, his professors
encouraged him to enroll in the
nations’ top school, the Art Stu-
dents League in New Rochelle,
N.Y. This hub of the nation’s best
commercial illustrators filled the
need for thousands of national
magazines and ads that used
original art.
Revere Wistehuff soon became
known as “Wistey.” He remained
life long friends with the Leyen-
decker brothers, Leslie Thatcher,
James Montgomery Flagg,
Edward Penfield, Orson Lowell,
Walter Beach Humphrey and
especially Norman Rockwell.
Living down the road from
Rockwell, Revere was frequently
asked to help “fill-in” Rockwell
paintings to keep his busy sched-
ule flowing. Rockwell liked the
way Wistehuff painted faces.
Like Rockwell, Wistehuff
styled himself as a “realist.” He
worked with models for all his
pictures. He said he was not a
“
gallery man” and did not paint
to exhibit. All his work was com-
mercial.
He would be surprised to learn
that in the 21st century, his origi-
nal art sells for many thousands
of dollars.
In the 1920s through the
1940
s, Wistehuff’s lively and
beautiful scenes of American life
graced the covers of hundreds of
magazines, notably the Saturday
Evening Post, Life Magazine,
Colliers, Liberty, Wit, The Wire-
less Age, Everybody’s Weekly,
Capper’s Farmer, American
Girl, People’s Popular Monthly,
Canada’s MacLeans, New York
Herald Tribune, People’s Home
Journal and American Needle-
woman to name a few.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
