George Wolfe Plank, born 1883 in Pennsylvania, was an American artist illustrator, chiefly remembered for his long-term association with Vogue Magazine, which resulted in years of covers in an Art Deco style related to that of Helen Dryden and influenced, by among others, Edmund Dulac.
Plank's work has been compared with such artists as Rackham, Dulac, Alphonse Mucha and even Gustav Klimt. His work is characterised by broad fields of bright colour setting off the mass and line of his principal figures. "His composition is clear and simple, the wealth of sartorial detail notwithstanding."
Plank broke onto the Vogue scene with his mature style almost completely established and worked for some years with no real rivals before Helen Dryden's work matured and she became one of the most important of his colleagues. William Packer described Plank's concept of fashion as:
"Ideal, bizarre and improbable, at once adventurous and yet romantic and nostalgic".
Despite his prolific career, very is little known about him today but to learn more you can read an essay on Plank by Dominic James: Early Twentieth-Century Vogue, George Wolfe Plank and the ‘Freaks of Mayfair’. For my own article however, I will let the art speak for itself.