“John Newton Howitt [Pulp Artists.com] was born May 7, 1885 (1958) in White Plains, New York. His parents were John and Addie Howitt. His brother Louis was five years younger. They lived at 21 Lake Street. His father manufactured ladies’ clothing.

At age four John Newton Howitt contracted polio. During his convalescence, his father interested him in drawing. After his recovery he wore a metal brace on his right leg. In 1901 he graduated White Plains High School at age sixteen…

In 1902 Howitt studied in New York City at the Art Students League with George Bridgman and Walter Clark. When commerce collapsed during the Great Depression, slick magazines suffered from lost advertising. Howitt began to work for pulp magazines instead. The pulps were funded by newsstand sales and were growing extremely profitable as idle workers began to read more. Howitt was an excellent pulp cover artist. He signed his covers for Western pulps and romance pulps with his regular professional signature, “JOHN NEWTON HOWITT,” but he also painted many ghastly and shocking pulp covers, and these were all signed with only his initial “H.” Most pulp artists who wanted to disown the covers would conventionally leave them unsigned and uncredited. Howitt’s “H” is only a modest deception, which seems to imply some ambivalent pride in even his most outrageous pulp covers.”

[Perhaps most peculiar for me, is that there was quite a collection of similar artists born in the late 1880s that went to work for various advertising and publications. The most famous I would say by a landslide was Norman Rockwell. But why? That’s my question. They were all wonderful artists with very enjoyable art, yet Rockwell garnered all the attention. Why him?]