WILLIAM MEAD PRINCE (1893-1951)
Dog Doesn't Like Sax Sounds
3/28/1925
William Meade Prince was born in Roanoke, Virginia, and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He could not choose between West Point Military Academy or architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, so he settled on going North to study art at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts.
After five years of advertising work in Chicago, Prince moved to Westport, Connecticut, where he could combine his illustration work for the magazines in New York with his interest in riding and maintaining fine Arabian horses. When Westport eventually became too urban for riding, Prince returned to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he built his own studio and stables to continue his work in illustration. Prince was noted for his spirited and sympathetic interpretations of Roark Bradford’s Black stories for Collier’s magazine.
William Meade Prince gained recognition through his lively covers for The Country Gentleman. His first cover for The Country Gentleman appeared on August 16, 1924 entitled “Build your own radio”. He continued to grace the cover of The Country Gentleman through April 1, 1940 with his illustrations of men, women and children captured in everyday living experiences. From 1924 through 1940 William Meade Prince illustrated forty-eight covers for The Country Gentleman.
William Meade Prince also taught illustration for several years, and figure drawing at the University of North Carolina and was head of the Art Department from 1943 through 1946.
William Meade Prince was 58 years old when he died in 1951 while living in Connecticut.