
Edmund Franklin Ward, born 3 January 1892, was an American illustrator who illustrated for the Saturday Evening Post, receiving his fist commission for the magazine before turning age 20.
Ward was born in White Plains, New York. He studied at the Art Students League, New York in the same class with Norman Rockwell. The two students became friends, and shared a studio in the attic of a Manhattan brownstone. Among his teachers were Edward Dufner, George Bridgman and Thomas Fogarty.
He had a successful career as an illustrator of works that ranged in style and subject matter from dark tonalist in oils to humorous in wash and watercolour. For many years he illustrated the Alexander Botts and Assistant District Attorney Doowinkle stories for the Saturday Evening Post.
He later moved to the Manhattan suburb of New Rochelle, a well known artist colony and home to many of the top commercial illustrators of the day including friend Norman Rockwell. At the time more than fifty percent of the illustrations in the country’s leading publications were done by artists from New Rochelle.
Ward returned to White Plains where spent his professional career, reviving a commission for a painted mural for the Federal Building. He was an elected official in the county government for over a decade and served on the White Plains library's Board of Trustees for 30 years. Ward's illustrations of the American West are some of his most well-known works outside of White Plains.

He was a longtime member of the Salmagundi Club, the Guild of Free Lance Artists, and was a member of the Society of Illustrators. Edmund Franklin Ward died 14 December 1990, aged 98. His painting Hudson Valley Legends won him the Bicentennial Award at the National Art Show of the Hudson Valley Art Association at the Westchester County Center in 1976. Ward painted it the year of America's Bicentennial, filling the painting with references to Washington Irving's most famous works, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, and thereby created more material for Americans' historical imaginations.
Kommentare