Herschel C. Logan was an American artist and founding member of the Prairie Print Makers. He is known primarily today for his woodcuts of serene, nostalgic scenes of Midwest small towns and farms—mostly Kansas subjects—rendered in precise, clean lines. He earned both international acclaim as well as the nickname "The Prairie Woodcutter".
His work shows a deep admiration and respect for the beauty of rural America, and great skill in its portrayal. People were seldom a subject in these works beyond small figures as part of the landscape, though he also produced many portraits of famous Americans and other historical figures. Logan's work is similar to that of his contemporary J. J. Lankes. Scenes of rural life are dominant in both artists’ woodcuts, and both use an “L” monogram to sign their works in the print.
From 1921 to 1938, Logan produced some 140 woodcuts in editions up to 50,140 is the number most often quoted in the literature, sometimes qualified as “near” or “approximately”. The actual number is difficult to pin down. Logan’s own typed inventory, reproduced in Lehman, lists 136, but includes non-editioned works. For example, it has both the first (abandoned) and second versions of “Country Store”, and both “Temple of Karnak” and “Valley of the Kings”, both annotated as experiments. It includes his early works like “California or Bust”, likely not editioned, and a “Craftmen’s Club Cover”, also a one-off. There are at least 20 more prints in the Kansas State and Wichita Art Museum collections, only some of which may fall into Logan’s final entry of “many small cuts for Christmas cards and other printing”. but then gave up printmaking as a profession. In the following nearly 50 years, he was an author and illustrator, a collector, a noted authority on firearms, and a publisher of miniature books.
Early life and education Logan was born on April 19, 1901, in Magnolia, Missouri, to Oliver Cary Logan (1877-1944) and Leota Pinkie Bills Logan (1880-1902). After the death of his mother in January 1902 his father took the remaining family, including his grandparents, to live on a farm near Winfield, Kansas. At Winfield High School he became the staff cartoonist for the school newspaper, The Oracle. After graduation in 1920 he studied commercial art at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. He also took courses at the Olivet Institute in Chicago and through the Federal School (aka Art Instruction, Incorporated), a correspondence art school in Minneapolis.
On June 20, 1924, Logan married his first wife, Susie Titus (1902-1990), in Wichita, Kansas.From correspondence with son Samuel, March 20, 2022: "[My] Mother’s full name is Susie Titus ... She had no middle name. She was born January 25, 1902, in Waldo, Ks to Casper Grant and Lona May Crawford Titus. Susie and Herschel were married June 20, 1924, in Wichita, Ks. Mom died August 24, 1990. Susie and Herschel were divorced August 5, 1956 They had two children, Samuel Herschel Logan and Peggy Joan Logan.
Career After a year of studying art in Chicago, Logan took a position as branch manager for Salina Mid-Continent Engraving before accepting a job as a commercial artist for the McCormick-Armstrong Lithography Company in Wichita. One of his contributions was a series of woodcuts offered as “Exclusive Holiday Greetings from Wood Cuts by Herschel C. Logan”.
Logan left Wichita in 1929 to work for the Consolidated Printing and Stationery Company in Salina, becoming its director in 1931. He stayed there until he retired in 1967, and soon after moved to Santa Ana, California. There he met and married his second wife, Anne Lawrence Serven, in 1970. Soon after, Logan started a new career publishing miniature books (see below), and would travel around California drawing and painting trees and landscapes, typically ink or graphite with watercolor.
Logan died on December 8, 1987, in Santa Ana, California.
Printmaking It was at the Olivet Institute that Logan met fellow artists like Glenn Golton, Louis Grell, and Harry Muir Kurtzworth. A friendship with C.A. Seward,”Several accounts indicate that Logan met Seward after joining McCormick-Armstrong, however, according to a sketchbook of Logan’s in the Beach Museum, the two met in Chicago while Logan was in school.” - From a staff annotated bio, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University a well-known Kansas printmaker, heightened Logan's interest in woodcuts; it also put Logan in contact with other printmakers such as Lloyd Foltz, Charles Capps, Clarence Hotvedt, and Leo Courtney and painter Birger Sandzen from nearby Lindsborg. It was through these friendships that Logan learned the art of printmaking, and that eventually led to their founding, with others, the Prairie Print Makers society in 1930. There Logan “lent his skill as a craftsman and instinctive aptitude for carving wood blocks that had established his national recognition by the age of twenty-three.”
Logan gained considerable recognition for his body of editioned woodcuts, most of them about Kansas. He was exhibited extensively in the Mid-West, but also at international exhibitions in Los Angeles and at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Logan worked from life, using photographs or sketches he made on location, often finding inspiration in simple structures by the roadside while driving. He would spend several days studying and refining a sketch before proceeding.
In 1938 Logan collaborated on a book entitled “Other Days in Pictures and Verse”. Presenting a nostalgic view of "The Good Old Days" in small town America, it incorporates 12 woodcuts, prose poems by Everett Scrogin, and decorations by C.A. Seward.
Portraits were another favorite subject for Logan. Twelve prints of famous Americans were gathered into a book with short biographies, and later reissued as a calendar by the Consolidated Printing Company.
Famous printers and printmakers throughout history were another focus of Logan's portraiture. He produced over 100 portraits in pen in ink for a book project “Great Names in Printing Through Six Centuries” that was never realized despite having lithographic reproductions prepared and possible page mockups. Fifteen of these were published posthumously in the miniature book Portraits of Some Famous PrintersLogan, Herschel C, Bela Blau, Vance Gerry, and Patrick Reagh. Portraits of Some Famous Printers. Los Angeles: Zamorano Club, 1992. Print. as a keepsake for the 1992 joint meeting of the Roxburghe & Zamorano Clubs.
Logan abandoned fine art printmaking in general after 1938. Logan himself recalled “...after my friend Seward’s long illness and death [Jan 31, 1939], I simply lost interest in making prints.” “But perhaps more to blame were Herschel’s restless energies which were diverted to other enterprises.” By then he had thoroughly explored his love of the Kansas countryside from farms to towns to landmarks, often revisiting scenes often in different seasons or different times of the day. Logan later reflected “After World War II, abstract art and painting became more popular and took over, and printmaking just kind of fell apart."
Logan did not completely abandon woodblock printing, nor its companions linocut and rubber plates. Throughout his career he advocated woodcut as a desirable medium for a straightforward presentation of an idea in his commercial work and designed many woodcut logos, emblems and bookplates. This extended to a woodcut style – he emulated woodcuts in many of his commercial work and later drawings, a technique he developed for advertising purposes, “satisfactory and yet may be produced quickly and with less difficulty”. Logan continued to produce numerous portraits throughout his life, generally in pen and ink. A large collection is found in his “Little Portraits of Famous Americans”, a miniature book from 1973.
Consolidated Printing In 1939, Logan began hosting “The Consolidated Hour”, a weekly series of radio talks on KSAL in which he talked about Kansas industries. Starting January 2, 1939, he introduced “The Colonel” in advertisements for Consolidated Printing and Stationery. The Colonel was a dapper cartoon gentleman in a long black frock coat and vest, sporting a Kentucky Colonel necktie, a wide-brimmed Stetson hat, a handlebar mustache, and a goatee. He offered short bits of homespun philosophy, “sometimes serious, sometimes merely amusing, but never bitter”. Logan himself describes The Colonel as a bit of Abe Lincoln, Will Rogers, Teddy Roosevelt and other characters he admired. A mainstay of Consolidated advertising, The Colonel appeared weekly in the Salina Journal for nearly 30 years. Logan both drew and wrote copy for the Colonel, becoming so identified with his creation that “The Colonel” became a widely used nickname among colleagues and friends. Indeed, as Logan himself was a Kentucky Colonel since 1934 and sometimes dressed the part, “The Colonel" was very much his alter ego.
Logan contributed a considerable amount of art to Consolidated's work products through the years, from small decoration to full illustrations. An advertising sheet contains numerous samples of his work. A postcard illustration of the Brookville Hotel in Brookville, Kansas, shows his use of the woodcut style.
Firearms and ammunition Since Logan was young he was interested in guns, whittling rifles and pistols as a boy on the farm. He collected his first antique firearm, a blunderbuss, in 1932. As his collection grew, Logan became an expert in firearms and ammunition, authoring and illustrating a number of books that continue to be standard historical references. He also contributed drawings and articles to the American Rifleman over a period of more than two decades. Logan became a popular lecturer in the Civil War Roundtable circuit as a noted collector and historian.
When Logan purchased a Smith & Wesson American .44 engraved “Texas Jack, Cottonwood Spring, 1872”, he learned all he could about John B. “Texas Jack” Omohundro, a colorful Old West showman and scout.A photo of the gun can be found at The result was the book “Buckskin and Satin: The Life of Texas Jack (J.B. Omohundro)”. -- from the author's preface: "I chanced ... to acquire an interesting revolver ... engraved 'TEXAS JACK COTTONWOOD 1872'. This would be interesting enough for the average person, but to an arms collector of many years standing, it was a thrilling bit of good fortune in that it offered an ideal incentive to delve back into history. ... the question as to the identity of the man whose name appeared on the side of the gun became uppermost in my thoughts. ... [my search] uncovered what is to me a most absorbing story of ... two inherently modest young people [whose] accomplishments were such as to reserve them a place among the immortals of the plains and stage."
Other gun-related texts: Cartridges: a Pictorial Digest of Small Arms Ammunition Hand Cannon to Automatic: A Pictorial Parade of Hand Arms The Little Book of Guns: A Chronology The Muzzle Loading Rifle Then and Now The Pictorial History of the Underhammer Gun
Miniature books Since his Consolidated Printing days Logan had been fascinated by the art and craft of printing and publishing. In 1940 he built a small-scale working model of Gutenberg's press out of wood for a display as part of the 500th Anniversary of Printing. In 1973 he purchased a Baby Reliance Hand Press and started a new career as a publisher of miniature books. The Log-Anne Press, named after him and his wife, operated out of a studio behind their Santa Ana home. The company published some 50 books.
Collecting