Fuqua, Robert
Entry updated 1 December 2024. Tagged: Artist.
Main working name used by US illustrator Joseph Wirt Tillotson (1905-1959); others included R Fuqua, Fuqua, Joe Tillotson, Joe W Tillotson, Joe Wirt Tillotson, Joseph W Tillotson and his full name, Joseph Wirt Tillotson. He received his formal art education at the Art Institute of Chicago, then went into advertising in that city; to supplement his income he took on freelance Illustration commissions, signing these "Robert Fuqua" – his maternal grandfather's name – to disguise his second career from his advertising clients. In due course Fuqua became a prolific artist for the Ziff-Davis magazines, then based in Chicago; between 1938 and 1944 he painted 24 covers for Amazing Stories, with one more in July 1951; during that 1938-44 period he also did seven covers for Fantastic Adventures with, again, another in 1951. He did perhaps twice as many back covers for these magazines.
When Ziff-Davis moved away from Chicago, Fuqua stayed, contributing illustrations to Raymond A Palmer's magazines Imagination and Other Worlds; he might have become better known had he worked also for New York-based publishers. One of the more prominent sf illustrators of the 1930s and 1940s, Fuqua, like other artists working on these magazines at the time – such as J Allen St John – used very bright colours to compensate for poor reproduction processes. His melodramatic style – the very essence of Pulp-magazine sf – perfectly complemented the lurid ethos of Ziff-Davis and Ray Palmer. [JG/PN/JGr]
Joseph Wirt Tillotson
born Greeneville, Mississippi: 30 January 1905
died Hamilton, Ohio: 1 September 1959
links
- Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists
- Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Project Gutenberg
- Picture Gallery
previous versions of this entry