Nationality: American

Birthdate: June 18, 1877

Date of Death: May 27, 1960

GMC Ranking:

James Montgomery Flagg was an American illustrator, poster artist, and portrait painter known for his illustrations of buxom girls and particularly for his World War I recruiting poster of a pointing Uncle Sam with the caption “I Want You”. The poster was reissued during World War II.

At the age of 12, Flagg sold his first drawing to the children’s magazine St. Nicholas; after 1892 he was a regular contributor to other popular periodicals, and his illustrations were collected into books. His dashing line and sure draftsmanship were evident in his portraits in oil and watercolor, the only “serious” art he practiced. Flagg was known to the public mainly through his commercial art. In his autobiography, Roses and Buckshot (1946), Flagg represented himself as a bohemian, unfettered by convention.

At his peak, Flagg was reported to have been the highest-paid magazine illustrator in America. He worked for The Saturday Evening Post and Collier's, which were two of the most popular U.S. journals.

Apart from his work as an illustrator, Flagg painted portraits which reveal the influence of John Singer Sargent. Flagg's sitters included Mark Twain and Ethel Barrymore; his portrait of Jack Dempsey now hangs in the Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery. In 1948, he appeared in a Pabst Blue Ribbon magazine ad which featured the illustrator working at an easel in his New York studio with a young lady standing at his side and a tray with an open bottle of Pabst and two filled glasses sat before them.