Digging through the archive for Dogue, I found not a bone but a treasure trove of dog drawings by the artist Carl Erickson, who signed his work Eric; the nickname given to him by his classmates at the Chicago Academy of Art. The use of a single name has come to denote a level of excellence, and this Swedish American had that in spades—style too.
In her memoir, former Vogue editor-in-chief Edna Woolman Chase described Erickson, circa 1930, as “a devotee of bowler hats, bow ties, and a large brown poodle.” That was likely Fez. By 1949, Fez had been succeeded by Dinah, Sandy, and Mousse, also poodles, when in a glowing Vogue profile, art critic Aline Saarinen painted a more nuanced picture of the artist as a dandy: “The black Homburg, the perfectly cut navy-blue jacket and trousers, the vest with cheeks which echo the smaller checks of the shirt and contrast with the scattered pattern of a black brocade tie, the immaculate gray suede gloves, the rusty-color suede shoes and, in hand, the ever present stick, plucked when he left his apartment from a Chinese blue-and-white vase which holds five umbrellas and three other canes.” Erickson’s friend, the photographer Norman Parkinson provides further details; the suits were British, the shoes handmade, the cravat from Sulka, and the Locks bowler hat “slanted over one ear.”
Erickson’s work had a distinctive slant too. Working with a live model or on-site, his expressive line captured elegance, essence, and movement vibrantly. “One feels no hiatus, no lapse of time or thought between what he sees and what he draws,” Saarinen wrote. “The immediacy of his style and the intimacy between seeing and doing (no matter how many minutes the execution actually consumes) give the extraordinary quality of life to his work.” Erickson, she explained, couldn’t invent scenarios and only draw what he saw. In other worlds the flourish and fiction of his line is based in fact. Perhaps that’s why his fashion drawings were so sought after and his dog drawings (which don’t seem to have run in the magazine), read like portraits.
