A bit more on Hugh Rankin

That unfortunate trope again
A mix of the unfortunate and the not

(N.B. that I am indebted for this post to David Saunders’s post on Hugh Rankin at The Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists. The article contains its own small trove of Hugh Rankin’s art (see the links on the left-hand side of the page, and for both that and the article I recommend your visiting.)

Our boy Hugh (officially named Hugh Dearborn Copp) did his share of sexy covers for Weird Tales, many of them somewhat earlier than Margaret Brundage’s run. This one, for example, from August 1929:

As noted in yesterday’s post, Hugh’s mother Ellen Rankin Copp was a distinguished American sculptor, and herself the granddaughter prominent abolitionists and Underground Railroad “conductors” Jean (1795-1877) and John Rankin (1793-1886). Quite the American family! Mrs. Copp designed a 25-foot tall sculpture of the Hawaiian fire goddess Pele for the Hawaii pavilion at the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition.

Though only fourteen himself, Hugh ” sculpted a charming panel of Pixies and Brownies in a hurdle race, which was accepted by the Board of Lady Managers of the World’s Fair and exhibited in the Childrens’ Pavilion.” Mother and son were, in their way, nationally celebrated figures.

Dig even a little and history becomes more fascinating than we have a right to.

One thought on “A bit more on Hugh Rankin

  1. You got me going, so I did dig a little deeper. (I’m always on the look out for interesting, strong women to seduce when I get my time machine going). Ms. Ellen Rankin Copp has a nice Wiki article with an actual early photo of the mother-and-child tableau rendered in artistic manner above. Her features are a bit more severe, but interesting. Now, off to see if there are any records of that Pele statue…

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