FINLAY, Virgil (Warden)

(1914-1971)

   US illustrator. VF worked in both colour and black-and-white, but is best known for the latter, where his unique, painstaking stippling gained him fame although, because of the slow process involved, not fortune. Nonetheless he was prolific. His earliest work was an interior illustration for Weird Tales in 1935. Though it was in black-and-white interior work that he excelled - several thousand pieces - he also painted many covers, including 16 for Weird Tales and 24 for Famous Fantastic Mysteries. His work appeared also in A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine,Fantastic Novels, Fantastic Story Quarterly and about 27 other sf/fantasy magazines. He often added sparkling bubbles to his illustrations, partly as a decorative device and partly to modestly conceal parts of naked women. He was stronger in fantasy than sf, excelling (it was a common paradox) in the two extremes of the glamorous and the macabre, both meticulously executed. His early work was more abstractly stylized than the later, and suggested a toughness which later became smoothed under an expert commercial veneer. Possibly the greatest craftsman in the history of sf ILLUSTRATION, VF revolutionized its quality. The HUGO system arrived a little late for VF; though he was nominated 7 times, he won only once, in the very first year, 1953 - the only award ever given for Best Interior Illustration. He had only small success doing book covers, mostly 1949-58,which his style did not really suit. Sadly, the collapse in SF-MAGAZINE publishing in the mid-1950s - with the surviving magazines being DIGESTS rather than PULP MAGAZINES and so having fewer illustrations - forced VF away from sf as his main market, and through the late 1950s and the 1960s he worked largely on astrological illustrations. Many portfolios and books of his work have been published, the first being A Portfolio of Illustrations by Virgil Finlay (coll 1941) published by Famous FantasticMysteries. Books include Virgil Finlay (1971) ed Donald M. GRANT, and The Book of Virgil Finlay (1975) and Virgil Finlay Remembered (1981) ed Gerry de la Ree (1924 -1993), these latter being 2 out of 12 books of and about Finlay's art ed de la Ree.

   JG/PN

   See also: COMICS; FANTASY; SEX; SPACESHIPS.