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Recent feedback received
July 31, 2008
I have discovered for the first time the art of Jack Coggins. Being in my sixties it is difficult to describe the evocative sense of his ability to capture the time and spirit of his subject work.
Is there ANY chance that one may be able to obtain an original of his space artwork. I suspect not, the prices are probably too high and the pieces unobtainable but the work of this artist has truly brightened my life for which I am most grateful.
November 8, 2007
Just wanted to say thank you for keeping Mr. Coggins art alive. He was a great Marine Artist and more. He seemed like a very caring and sharing man. I have learned a lot from him.
September 21, 2007
"Fabulous Web Site for a Fabulous Illustrator..Was a pleasure and a privledge to visit. Very Nice Tribute."
August 21, 2008
I have now received the first edition of Subchaser Jim with its original dustcover, and have updated the website images accordingly.
From information in Jack's papers, his painting of the USS Dakota was used on the US Naval Institute Proceedings of February 1979, so I now have another item to search for.
Also, there was an issue of a stamp in 1978 celebrating the 115th anniversary of Chickamauga battlefield in the Civil War, which was used on an envelope with Jack's artwork. There was a special postmark made, and these were quite popular with collectors - I have also been on the lookout for one of these, but no luck so far.
I have also found a couple of old paper cuttings which are of interest.
This cutting is from an unknown paper, probably in the San Diego area, obviously during the war years. The St Nazaire submarine base commando raid occurred in 1942, and this ship was deliberately destroyed. (see here for details.) I have reproduced the photo caption below - some parts of the text are missing from the clipping.
This painting, done in 1938, would be a very early example of Jack's marine art - he finished his art training in 1934.
"The deliberate destruction of the former San Diego-based destroyer U.S.S. Buchanan, in a British Commando raid on the St. Nazaire submarine base last weekend, evoked memories for Francis Taylor, of 545 San Antonio St. On a wall of her home hangs an oil painting of the Buchanan shown above, by the young English marine artist, Jack Coggins, made for her husband, ?????? Taylor, now somewhere in the Pacific, in 1938, just before he left the Brooklyn Navy Yard ????. Taylor, from 1933 to 1935, was executive officer of the Buchanan out of San Diego."
This next item is from the Fort Hamilton Post, Friday October 29, 1943. The headline is Pete Paris and Pal Pass Along Some Info on our Fighting Partners. Part of the text reads "....With Pete is Pvt. Jack Coggins (left), famous marine illustrator, who was inducted into the army recently and is now on a special assignemnt for YANK ....."
This would have been just prior to Jack's departure for London - he was 32 years of age.
August 14, 2008
I have received a copy of Early Automobiles in the Spanish language, and after a long search, I have located a 1943 first edition copy of Subchaser Jim, with a dustcover. I am currently waiting its arrival by mail.
The catalogue is constantly being updated - currently the painting count is 966 - including some unsold works and some of the commissions the total is about 1080. What a prolific artist Jack was - when you consider all the books he wrote and illustrated, I don't know where he found the time.
August 6, 2008
I have digitised the painting catalogues now, and added them to the website here. There are just over 900 paintings in the three catalogues. I have found others which were not listed in the catalogues, and added them to the website listing as well. Small images of the paintings can be accessed from the list where these are available. I welcome any input or comments about the new listing, especially information or new images of any paintings not listed. Hopefully this listing will be a useful resource for collectors of Jack Coggins works.
I am now working through the other papers and photographs which arrived in the box from Jack's estate. One of the items is a magazine with a painting of a vessel which has turned up an interesting story.
This magazine was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United States Department of Commerce, in 1970. The Discoverer was one of two new oceanographic survey vessels commissioned to survey the ocean along the US Atlantic coast. In 1968, at the invitation of the Expedition Chief Scientist aboard the Discoverer, Jack Coggins joined the expedition at Barbados, to paint oils, watercolors, and sketches of work aboard.
Part of the work carried out by the vessel included the anchoring of instrumented vertical towers that obtain meteorological data at several heights above the sea and oceanographic data at several depths, as well as wave data at the sea surface. Professor Michael Garstang and his students at Florida State University had designed and built these towers and were proud that the ballasting system maintained the towers in the true vertical - an essential characteristic for their measurements.
Coggins did the large oil painting shown on the magazine cover of one of these towers, with a Boston whaler in the foreground and the Discoverer in the background. Unfortunately, he injected an element of artistic license. When he painted the instrumented tower as floating absolutely in the vertical, it looked to him like a bridge abutment rising from the sea floor. To impart the feeling of its being a floating tower, he painted it as leaning about 20 degrees in a choppy sea. The painting is magnificent, but Professor Garstang was furious when this painting was reproduced as a NOAA Christmas card and widely distributed throughout the oceanographic community. He probably became incandescent when he saw the painting on an official US Government magazine cover.