Frederic Dorr Steele

Frederic Dorr Steele (August 6, 1873 – July 6, 1944) was an American illustrator and Broadway performer. Born in Eagle Mills, near Marquette, Michigan, he was the eldest of three children of William Henry Steele and Zulma De Lacy Steele. His family relocated to Appleton, Wisconsin in 1876, then to Rutland, Vermont in 1889. His mother was an artist, and his maternal grandmother was the author Julia C. R. Dorr; both encouraged his artistic development. By the time he was sixteen, Steele had resolved to pursue a professional career in art, and he traveled to New York City in 1889 to begin his training at the Art Students' League and the National Academy of Design.

To support himself during his studies, Steele spent three years working as an architectural draftsman before completing a two-year apprenticeship in the art department of the Harper publishing firm. He joined the staff of The Illustrated American from 1896 to 1897, then transitioned to freelance illustration. His first color illustration appeared in the November 1900 issue of Scribner's Magazine, accompanying Mary Catherine Lee's story "The Wheel of Time." He subsequently produced color-tinted illustrations for two Sewell Ford horse stories published in Scribner's in 1901 and 1902. In 1902, he was elected to the Society of Illustrators. An April 1901 profile by Arthur Hoeber in The Book Buyer noted that while Steele worked in various media, he favored crayon as his most expressive tool, a preference he maintained throughout his life. Over the course of his career, Steele contributed illustrations to numerous publications including The Century Magazine, McClure's, The American Magazine, Metropolitan Magazine, Woman's Home Companion, and Everybody's Magazine, where he served as art editor during World War I. He also illustrated several novels, among them Richard Harding Davis's The Scarlet Car (1907), E. W. Hornung's The Crime Doctor (1914), and Geraldine Bonner's The Black Eagle Mystery (1916).

Steele is best remembered as the foremost American illustrator of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. In 1903, Collier's Weekly commissioned him to illustrate The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and he went on to produce drawings for 26 of the last 33 Holmes stories in their initial American magazine appearances. The illustrations for The Return of Sherlock Holmes were created in Deerfield, Massachusetts, where Steele worked with an English model named Robert King; for later stories he drew Holmes from other models, including Frank B. Wilson and S. B. Doughty. His depictions were grounded in the stage portrayal of Holmes by the American actor William Gillette, who had originated the role in the play's 1899 premiere. Steele acknowledged this debt explicitly in an essay he wrote for a souvenir program dated November 22, 1929, clarifying that it was Gillette who shaped his vision of Holmes rather than the reverse, and noting that he did not see Gillette's production until 1905 and did not draw Gillette from life until 1929. Steele's illustrations are credited with helping to establish the popular association of Holmes with a curved pipe and deerstalker hat. He also illustrated a Holmes parody by Carolyn Wells, "The Adventure of the Clothes-line," published in The Century Magazine in May 1915, and wrote four Holmes parodies of his own: "The Adventure of the Missing Hatrack" (1926), "The Adventure of the Missing Artist" (1928), "The Attempted Murder of Malcolm Duncan" (1932), and "The Adventure of the Murdered Art Editor" (1933). Vincent Starrett dedicated his 1933 book The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes to Steele and William Gillette, among others. Steele contributed an article titled "Sherlock Holmes in Pictures" to The New Yorker on May 22, 1937, a revised version of which appeared in Starrett's 1940 anthology 221B: Studies in Sherlock Holmes. He also illustrated the dust jacket of Ellery Queen's 1944 anthology The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes.

In addition to his work as an illustrator, Steele appeared on Broadway in 1928 in the comedy The Beaux' Stratagem. That same year, the New York Herald-Tribune began publishing his theatrical illustrations, a body of work that grew to approximately 200 drawings representing many different productions between 1928 and 1944. He also illustrated a 1941 edition of W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence. As the Great Depression curtailed his magazine work, newspaper illustration became an increasingly significant part of his output.

In his personal life, Steele married Mary ("Polly") Thyng in 1898. The couple lived primarily in Nutley, New Jersey until 1912, then returned to New York. Their first child, John Frederic Steele, was born in 1899 and died at age three. Three other children survived: Anne Steele Marsh, Robert Gilmore Steele, and Zulma Steele Grey. Steele was a member of The Players club and edited its publication, The Players Bulletin, for several years. He and his wife separated in 1936 but did not divorce, and he spent his later years in his studio at 717 Greenwich Street. In the spring of 1944, a decline in health led to his hospitalization at Mountainside Hospital in New Jersey, where he was diagnosed with pellagra, followed by a stay at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He died at Bellevue Hospital on July 6, 1944, and was cremated; his ashes were interred in a family plot at the Albany Rural Cemetery. A memorial exhibition of his work was held at the Morton Galleries in New York from March 26 to April 7, 1945. In 1986, his children donated a substantial collection of manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and related materials to the University of Minnesota Libraries.