**This page is still under construction. I realize that the large amount of images may cause some to not load for the viewer.**
In this page I will look at the Weatherbirds during the transitional period between Chopin and Martin.
We know that the St. Louis Chronicle on December 6, 1904 reports that Chopin started working for them. The article doesn't actually specify that he started that day, but we don't see any of his work in the papers before that day. It is harder to say when he actually left the Post-Dispatch. And even if we knew this it would not necessarily mean that me drew the bird up to that date. Conceivably, he may have even drawn some extra birds to be run after his departure. So we will have to look closely at each bird.
But first I want to reiterate that this will all be an analysis by a complete amateur, and that a lot of this is only speculation, especially when talking about handwriting, since I have no credentials whatsoever in any related field. On top of that, these professional illustrators would vary their lettering style to fit the size and context of their work, so they don't necessarily have a consistent lettering style anyway.
That being said.
Chopin, when taking over the bird job in January 1903, did not attempt to imitate Harry Martin's handwriting style. He almost immediately started using his distinct curly lettering without regard for horizontal lines.
Feb. 5, 1903
A typical late November bird for context.
No Bird Dec. 2
Monday Dec. 5
Unfortunately the Dec. 6 paper in the Newspaper.com archive is missing the bird.
Dec. 7th is a Chopin reprint, the 8th and 9th are missing.
Looks like Chopin to me.
The 11th is a Chopin reprint.
This to me looks a lot like Lesueur's birds. The big head, beadier eyes, neater handwriting and more ground details.
Dec. 13th is missing.
This one really looks like Lesueur's lettering but the bird looks like Chopin. Who knows.
Dec. 15
And this is about how they all look the rest of December, including the Lesueur style boxy speech bubble.
This looks like a Chopin bird with Lesueur lettering. I can't find this bird used before though. It could be a leftover Chopin, or a reprint of a missing bird, or I'm just wrong.
The bird looks strange
Jan. 6
Looking strange again
Jan. 7, back to Lesueur style. The birds look similar until:
This really looks like Chopin's lettering. It could be a reprint of a missing bird or a leftover Chopin.
The first signed Lesueur. It looks like those before it (besides the previous) which makes me really think Lesueur has been the main bird artist since mid-December.
After this the bird looks very consistent and often signed by Lesueur, aside from a Chopin reprint here and there, until late April. See the Lesueur page for more of his birds. Lesueur does vary the look of the bird some, but signs them often enough that I don't suspect the variations imply different artists. An example:
There are two birds in this period that look funny to me but I don't know what to make of them. And they are both one-offs in the midst of Lesueur birds so I'm not too worried about them.
I suspect that this is the last bird of Lesueur's main run. There is no bird the next day, though being a Sunday that is not unusual.
I really think that this is SC Martin's lettering. Compare with this bird signed by SCM:
And this illustration from September 1905:
I suspect SCM again.
The same.
From here on, there are only occasionally birds that I suspect are not SCM's, based on their similar-lookingness and the lettering that to me looks like SCM's.
May 1
I'm not saying that this is a different artist but it is an interesting bird at least.
May 7
Same
What is now a typical bird
Another typical bird
A little different but no reason to suspect a different artist
He's teasing us
A little different but no reason to suspect a different artist
"Detecletive". See the Dec. 30 bird at the bottom of the page.
July Birds
I don't think we can glean anything from these birds but it is interesting to see how over a couple of weeks in this month the lettering and style is more up in the air. Was the artist just honing his bird style? Or were different artists all pitching in to produce the daily bird?
July 5
Looks normal, but I included this one because of the Dr. Bird
(no bird the 11th)
Back to the way it was before.
July 23
This looks like Al Frueh's lettering always does. It is a generic bird that could be saying anything so it could have been drawn an lettered by two different people.
Frueh's letters?
Between the 11th and 26th the birds all look like these.
The Turkey Birds
From August 27th to September 1st we see a set of five odd birds (and one normal summer '05 bird).
Monday Aug. 28
Tuesday Aug. 29
Wednesday Aug. 30
Thursday Aug. 31
This is one week is the only time the bird looks anything like this, and then he goes back to looking like August 8th for the rest of the year. It's interesting that four of the five really seem to be lettered by Al Frueh, and the one that doesn't is a generic bird that could be saying anything. Which indicates (note, I'm not saying it demonstrates) that some birds at the time were drawn and lettered by different people. See this example of his work, in an illustration for the Post-Dispatch in 1908, along with the only bird that I know of that we can be confident Frueh drew:
Apr. 26, 1908
While most of the artists will vary their lettering style, I have never found any of Frueh's works that don't have lettering identical to this.
Incidentally, here is the bird of that day, from page 17:
The Rest of the Year
The rest of the year, the bird stays is pretty much the same form.
Here is the first of the regular boxes, which the bird will be in for the next 80 years or so.
Another example of a generic bird with different lettering than usual. I'm not sure that I have ever noticed a bird with a specific prop, like the one below, where the lettering seems unusual.
I chose this last one because it is the second Weatherbird that uses the word "Detecletive", which is extremely obscure. Presumably it was slang from the time but there are very few uses of it and I can't determine a definition. Actually this bird here is the best context I have found for the use of the word. Google gives no results for the word and even Newspapers.com gives only two results outside of these two birds.
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