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| Curtis Charles Senf |
The September 1931 Weird Tales had, perhaps, one of the
most farcical blunders ever committed by a magazine illustrator, and it
happened to one of Robert E. Howard’s most popular and prized characters,
Solomon Kane. The artist was Curtis Charles Senf (C.C. Senf), who at the time,
lived in Chicago and began drawing covers and interior illustrations for Weird Tales. His
debut cover was the March 1927 issue. In fact, Senf did 8 of the 12 covers for Weird Tales in 1927, and 11 of the 12
covers for 1928. His numbers tapered off a little after these two years, but
over-all, Senf was the artist for 45 covers at Weird Tales. In addition to this, he drew hundreds of interior
illustrations for The Unique Magazine. To say he was a seasoned magazine artist
and illustrator is a slight understatement. However, and this is a pretty big
however, he eventually stopped reading the stories he illustrated, and the
results were laughable, and even angered some of the writers for Weird Tales.
Curtis
Charles Senf was born on July 30, 1873, in Rosslau, Prussia. In 1881, when he
was a boy of eight, the Senf family emigrated to America on the S.S. Wieland.
They landed in New York City on June 28 and then ultimately settled in Chicago,
Illinois. His father's occupation was listed only as "workman." C.C. Senf attended public
school and upon graduating high school, he enrolled in the Chicago Institute of
Art. Following his art studies at the Chicago Institute of Art, Senf became a
commercial artist and lithographer. Eventually Senf opened an art agency called
Senf & Company with Fred S. Gould. This venture failed and eventually was
forced to file bankruptcy in 1903. There are no other details about employment
for Senf until he becomes a regular artist for Weird Tales. By the time he landed the job of cover and interior
artist for Weird Tales, Senf was
almost 54 years of age.
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| "The Bride of Dewer" |
Given
the fact that the cover art for Weird
Tales prior to 1927 was average to downright terrible, Senf was a welcomed
edition to the magazine. Even H. P. Lovecraft, who was often picky about weird
art (and weird fiction), expressed hope that this new artist might create better cover art than
previous artists had for the magazine. In a January 1927 letter to August Derleth,
Lovecraft declared, “I shall welcome the new cover artist, & can feel sure
at least that he can’t be any worse than those who have hitherto messed up the
magazine.” His hope would be short
lived, by June of that same year, Lovecraft told Derleth, “. . .the present
‘artist’ Senf has no sense of the fantastic whatever.” While Lovecraft is not
necessarily incorrect in his over-all opinion about Senf’s work, Senf “could do
a truly weird cover, one of his best being for ‘The Bride of Dewer,” and there were a few
others. In fact, a little later in this article, we will look at another truly
weird cover Senf did (and perhaps one of his best works) toward the end of his
career at Weird Tales. Moreover, in
1927 Senf was reading the stories and illustrating them according to their
content, so this last sentiment by Lovecraft was merely a stylistic complaint
on his part. Senf’s artwork, for the most part, was “better” than the work of
previous artists for the magazine, his style was that of late 19th century
artists, with nice detail, color, and vivid scope, and he excelled when the
story was a period piece. Even so, in many ways, Lovecraft was correct, Senf’s
sense of the fantastic and/or weird was not the greatest.
