E. Simms Campbell
1906 -1971
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BORN
January 2, 1906
Saint Louis, Missouri
DIED
January 27, 1971
White Plains, New York
EDUCATION
National Academy of Design
New York, New York
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
GENDER
RACE / ETHNICITY

Elmer Simms Campbell was a Black cartoonist and commercial artist active in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Elmer C. Campbell, was a high school assistant principal, and his mother, Bessie Simms Campbell, was a high school teacher. Campbell was introduced to art by his mother, who taught him to draw and paint with watercolors at a young age. He attended Englewood High School in Chicago, where he drew cartoons for the school newspaper, the E-Weekly.

Following high school, Campbell studied at the University of Chicago for one year, and then at the Art Institute of Chicago, where he took a course in art. He returned to St. Louis in 1925 and took a job with the advertising agency Triad Studios, which gave him his first opportunities in commercial art.

Campbell stayed in St. Louis for four years before he moved to New York in 1929. In New York, Campbell attended the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League, where he studied with the German political artist George Grosz and James Montgomery Flagg. Campbell began producing advertisements and posters for major magazines and entertainment companies such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook, The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, Warner Bros., United Artists, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, RKO Pictures and Twentieth Century-Fox.

Campbell’s most notable work was for Esquire magazine in New York beginning in 1933, where he later served as Art Editor. The highly prolific illustrator produced six to ten cartoons per month for Esquire, as well as thirty to forty "gag ideas” per month for other staff cartoonists.

Campbell was the first Black cartoonist to be syndicated nationwide, with his daily panel cartoon, CUTIES, being printed in fifty-eight newspapers throughout the country, according to Esquire.

Campbell continued to work until his death in 1971. Some of his major accomplishments included Honorable Mention at the 1940 American Negro Exhibition in Chicago and a Hearst Prize in 1936. He received an honorary master's of fine arts degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and an honorary Ph.D. of Humane Letters from Wilberforce University.

Despite his success in New York, Campbell maintained ties with St. Louis throughout his life. He was involved with the Urban League of St. Louis and was a guest speaker at the opening of the People’s Art Center in 1942.

References

Artist clippings file is available at:

“Elmer Simms Campbell: Artist File.” St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, Missouri

Bibliography

Select Sources

Theresa Dickason Cederholm, Afro-American Artists: A Bio-bibliographical Dictionary (Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1973).


Core Reference Sources

St. Louis Public Library, Dictionary of Saint Louis Artists (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Library, 1993).

St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis Art History Project: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Artists (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Library, 1989).

askART (database), askART, https://www.askart.com/.

Image Credits

Artwork

Elmer Simms Campbell, I Used to Know Her - Four Checkbooks Ago, 1936.

Watercolor and gouache with pencil/Board, 15 x 9 3/4 in.

Private Collection

Elmer Simms Campbell, Lefee Front Stomp, n.d.

Watercolor and heightened with white/Board, 15 x 11 in.

Private Collection

Portrait of Artist

Unknown, Photo of Elmer Simms Campbell, 1947.

Johnson Publishing Company Archive, published in the article “Country Gentleman,” Ebony 2, no. 10 (August 1947): 9 – 15.

Image courtesy of the Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution.

Contributors

John Knuteson, St. Louis Public Library

Artist Record Published

Published on September 20, 2021

Learn more

References

Artist clippings file is available at:

“Elmer Simms Campbell: Artist File.” St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, Missouri

Artist’s work in these institutions’ collections

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

Bibliography

Select Sources

Theresa Dickason Cederholm, Afro-American Artists: A Bio-bibliographical Dictionary (Boston: Trustees of the Boston Public Library, 1973).


Core Reference Sources

St. Louis Public Library, Dictionary of Saint Louis Artists (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Library, 1993).

St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis Art History Project: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Artists (St. Louis: St. Louis Public Library, 1989).

askART (database), askART, https://www.askart.com/.

Contributors

John Knuteson, St. Louis Public Library

Artist Record Published

Published on September 20, 2021

Updated on None

Citation

Knuteson, John. "Elmer Simms Campbell." In Missouri Remembers: Artists in Missouri through 1951. Kansas City: The Kansas City Art Institute and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; St. Louis: The St. Louis Public Library, 2021, https://doi.org/10.37764/5776.