...that not fewer than a billion people were surrounding the pool
Date1924
Artist
Douglas Duer
(American painter and illustrator, 1887–1964)
Illustration Citation"Shell-Shock, Limited," by Albert Payson Terhune, in Liberty Magazine, September 6, 1924
MediumGouache on illustration board
Dimensionscomposition: 11 5/16 × 13 1/2 in. (28.7 × 34.3 cm)
sheet: 13 3/8 × 14 5/8 in. (34 × 37.1 cm)
sheet: 13 3/8 × 14 5/8 in. (34 × 37.1 cm)
Credit LineGift of Joseph Fraczkowski, 1980
Object number1980-50.2
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextShell-Shock, Limited centers on a shell-shocked Army Captain, home after World War I with his wealthy Midwestern family, and finding solace only with the estate's Scottish kennel-keeper and his collie. In an attempt to recover, the captain goes on a lengthy camping trip, taking the collie with him. In the woods, he and the dog rescue a woman who has leaped into a stream, only to discover that she is part of a cast filming a movie. As a result, the Captain finds love, and both he and the dog find a new career in Hollywood. Although the dog plays a limited role in the story, Duer places the noble-looking canine in the foreground, displaying a solid dignity amid the hapless humans.A Maryland native, Douglas Duer began his study with Howard Pyle in 1909 and subsequently kept a studio in Wilmington until 1917. He entered the Army's camouflage section in World War I, joining artists such as the painter Abbott Thayer, the sculptor Daniel Chester French, and the architect Cass Gilbert. By 1923, he established a studio in New York and began his career in earnest, working for numerous popular magazines.
Toward the end of the 1920s, Duer moved to Philadelphia. He taught weekly classes at the Wilmington Academy of Art. During the Depression, he supplemented his illustration with work in public mural programs. As the economy improved, he created a number of book-jacket illustrations and advertisements.
Albert Payson Terhune was an American author, and dog breeder, best known for his books about heroic collies, beginning in Redbook in 1915 and gaining popularity with the book Lad: A Dog (1919), his first of 30 canine adventures, real and fictional. His 1938 Lassie story in The Saturday Evening Post ultimately generated movies and television shows.
