Grandmaster of fantasy, J. Allen St. John is best known for majestically illustrating Edgar Rice Burroughs creation of the wildly entertaining jungle sovereign, Tarzan. He began his artistic career as a young boy and at age 8, he traveled with his mother to Paris to study art. His mother’s father was Hilliard Hely, an artist of considerable talent who gained most of his artistic training in Paris. Much of St. John’s earliest and fondest memories consist of spending time with the “so-called bohemians” his mother gathered around her, and one of his greatest pleasures was strolling through the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the other countless quaint and charming corners of the city where no one but the dreamers dared to venture.
Several years later, St. John returned to the US to spend time with his father, who seemed to have plans other than drawing for his adolescent son. At the age of 16, St. John’s father decided that his son should train to become a merchant and arranged a partnership between himself and a man with sensible experience. Feeling as though his life was beginning to bind around him like an unwanted cage, the head strong teenager rebelled and his father had no other choice but to send him to his uncle’s ranch in California, in hopes that his son would put his defiant behavior towards something more constructive: becoming a cowboy.
St. John daydreamed of the time he had spent in Paris and of how happy and content he felt simply sketching. While on a trip to Los Angeles, fate grabbed him by the wrist and he coincidentally ran into Mr. Eugene Torrey, an accomplished artist and at one time, a student who studied at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, one of a number of influential art schools in France. St. John took a chance and tossed all other prearranged plans to the wind, deciding to study art under his newly found friend for the next three years. He traveled the sights of California, gaining inspiration from the magnificence of the Yosemite and drawing and painting the old Spanish missions. J. Allen St. John’s artistic ability advanced steadily.
It was in 1905 when publisher A.C. McClurg & Co. forged a relationship with the young St. John. Their first collaboration was “The Face In The Pool.” This fairy tale was written and illustrated by St. John but never quite worked out to any advantage. McClurg hired St. John again in 1915 to provide black and white chapter headings for the second Tarzan novel, The Return of Tarzan. The third novel of the series, The Beasts of Tarzan, featured St. John’s art for the color wrap-around dust jacket, black and white frontispiece, title page illustrations and an additional 38 pen and ink drawings to accompany the text. Over the next 20 years, a new Tarzan novel was produced every year featuring St. John’s art. St. John illustrated other McClurg books as well as the occasional book for Rand McNally in addition to teaching at the Chicago Art Institute and the American Academy of Art.
