Submitted December 2022 by Nancy Moure, Independent Art Researcher

Freeman, Don (1908-1978) (San Diego / New York / Santa Barbara)

Repro. and “Trumpeter’s Path to Art, Writing Told. [Come One, Come All, by Don Freeman: Rinehart] Don Freeman is a California artist and writer who also likes to play hot licks on a trumpet. His early days were spent in the house of Mrs. Blass, who cared for the three Freeman children and another child and planned careers for them, mostly with the aid of tea leaves and a Ouija board. They lived on the border at Chula Vista and later in San Diego where Mr. Freeman worked. Don’s descriptions of Chula Vista and San Diego are heightened by the drawings he has done from memory… Moved to New York.

After San Diego art school experience, Don was sent to New York to finish his education. He took his trumpet with him and earned money now and then playing at clubs and special events… What he learned at art school under John Sloan was the most important training Don had – how to draw a crowd. … Don Freeman met people famed in their fields… [musicians] and he went backstage in theaters, coming out with sketches… He even played a small part on the stage with three lines to speak… Those who were amused by the book Don wrote and illustrated when he came back from the war, ‘It Shouldn’t Happen to a Dog,’ will be even more entertained by the fun, recapturing of youthful zest and naivete and the pictures of all sorts of people in his gay, informal autobiography,”

Source:
Los Angeles Times, (newspaper) Dec. 11, 1949, p. 124 (i.e., pt. IV, p. 8).

Additional material can be found in Nancy Moure, Central Coast Artist Visitors before 1960: Publications in California Art, Volume 13, no. VII) Cambria, Ca., Dustin Publications, 2022.

Illustrator, painter and lithographer, Don Freeman was born in San Diego, CA on Aug. 11, 1908. He studied at the San Diego School of Fine Arts and continued in 1928 at the Art Students League in New York City under John Sloan and Harry Wickey.

Remaining in New York, he did drawings of the theater, which were published in the Herald Tribune, New York Times, and Theater Magazine. Most of his career was spent in New York city where he captured the spirit and essence of everyday life during the 1930s and 1940s.

He illustrated the works, Human Comedy (Saroyan), White Deer (Thurber() and Once Around the Sun (Atkinson). He was the author of Come One, Come All, and in 1951 he began illustrating a total of 33 children's books, which he co-authored with his wife, Lydia.

During his last 20 years he maintained a home in Santa Barbara, CA. He died on Feb. 1, 1978 while in New York City to meet his editor at Viking Press. Three years before his demise Mayor Lindsey presented him with the keys to the city and dubbed him the "Daumier of New York City."

Exhibitions:
Philadelphia Print Club, 1936 (prize);
Art Institute of Chicago
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
CGA

Collection:
Whitney Museum.