Joseph Clement Coll

• Name — Joseph Clement Coll • Born — 2 July 1881 • Died — 19 October 1921 • Known for — Pen and ink illustration

Joseph Clement Coll was born on July 2, 1881, in Philadelphia to an Irish immigrant family. Both his father and his brothers worked as book binders. As a child, Coll read many illustrated books and magazines. He graduated Central High School, where he took basic art courses, and started work without any academic art training.

Joseph Clement Coll began his professional career working for the New York American as a newspaper artist apprentice at age 17. At this time, his position would be similar to a modern-day news photographer, as his job was to illustrate current events each day within the daily deadline. That same year, he moved to Chicago temporarily. In 1901, he came back to Philadelphia to work on The North American and soon drew the eye of his editor, J. Thomson Willing, who sent him on special missions to procure his skill. The two remained friends even after Coll stopped doing newspaper illustrations. He was soon working for magazines such as Collier's, Everybody's and the American Sunday Magazine. Coll's reputation stands mainly on his pen & ink story illustrations. In contrast to most illustrators who worked in pen & ink, Coll achieved true tonal gradations in his illustrations by using pen strokes to build up a complete range of values. He was influenced by the Spanish pen & ink artist Daniel Vierge. According to Walt Reed, Coll's "technical virtuosity nor the romantic fantasy of his point of view has ever been rivaled". Coll was also a painter and he often did paintings for the cover or frontispiece of books which were reproduced in color and then pen & inks to illustrate the text. He was considered an ideal illustrator for authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle and other adventure writers. His illustrations for books such as Talbot Mundy's King of the Khyber Rifles and Sax Rohmer's The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu were widely reprinted for many years. Coll died in 1921 of appendicitis, aged 40.

• Illustration — Professor Challenger, before 1921, ink on paper • Illustration — Doctor Fu Manchu, 1910s, ink on paper • Illustration — Illustration for The Story "The Tillotson Banquet", 1921, ink on paper