Biography
Franklin McMahon (1921-2012) was an acclaimed American illustrator, a reportorial artist who had a deep interest in politics and world events. He is best known for his active witness watercolors and pencil drawings, created on location, documenting U.S. political debates, protests, and trials, including the historic September 1955 trial following the murder of young Emmett Till, which he covered for Life magazine. Public reaction and coverage by the press was a force for change, and McMahon became known as the Man Who Drew History. He also documented the civil rights movement, the space race, the national political scene, world religions and cultures, and the world of sports. McMahon believed that the artist’s greatest responsibility is to bear witness.
Born in 1921, in Chicago, Illinois, McMahon enjoyed his childhood in the prosperous neighborhood of Oak Park. Especially close to his mother, he would often spend time in the garden observing and analyzing nature around him.
In 1934, McMahon and his mother, Elizabeth Franklin McMahon, made the journey via bus from Chicago to Beverly Hills, CA, where they joined his father, William McMahon. Along the way, he created illustrations inspired by those found in The New Yorker depicting the westward migration during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. McMahon also observed the world through the windows of the bus, documenting a terrain strewn with broken-down cars that housed families of farmers. This early exposure to historic events sparked his interest in social concerns, as evidenced in his work later in life.
McMahon first started to share his artworks with others in a Beverly Hills grammar school, where he made posters for the classroom. Then, his family moved back to Oak Park, IL, where he was an active member of the Fenwick High School newspaper and specialized in gag cartoons.
McMahon was also an entrepreneurial man, especially during the Great Depression which permeated his high school years. Once a booming community, his hometown of Oak Park, IL
became impoverished, but he continued to thrive, submitting cartoons to a myriad of magazines. He paid for the postage of his art by selling shares of his commissions to his fellow classmates. In 1939, toward the end of his high school career, he received a lucrative commission from Collier’s. After graduation, he began working professionally at an art studio in Chicago.
In the midst of his promising career, McMahon enlisted in the armed forces. He served in the Army Air Corps as a B-17 navigator; he was captured when his aircraft was shot down and was detained in a prisoner of war camp for several months. There, he created some of his earliest reportage drawings. After an arduous career in the military, he was grateful to make it home to Chicago where he married his high school sweetheart, Irene Leahy, in 1945.
The couple was happily married for fifty-two years, until Irene died in 1997. Together, they had five boys and four girls, who recalled the family’s lively discussions of art and politics at the dinner table. With the passing of the GI Bill, McMahon honed his skills by attending night classes at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, American Academy of Art, Harrington College of Design, Institute of Design, and Art Institute of Chicago. McMahon’s involvement in politics and the Civil Rights movement started when the publisher, Row-Peterson, asked him to design a book on the Constitution of Illinois. He traveled throughout the state to observe how the constitution affected the lives of Americans. Through this and other projects, he became more widely known, and in 1955, he was commissioned to report on Emmett Till’s murder trial for Life magazine. This report was a catalyst for the creation of his powerful drawings focusing on civil rights protests in Selma, AL; Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; 1964 trials following the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers; Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign, and the 1995 Million Man March; which greatly contributed to the fight for equal rights.
When Life magazine restricted McMahon to reporting specifically on trials, he took a brief break from American politics and traveled to Europe. There, he created drawings focusing on the European Common Market and the opening day of Vatican Council II, which were featured in Fortune, The Saturday Evening Post, Jubilee, and Look.
In 1960, McMahon’s return to America inspired his portraits of noted national figures including Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. In 1964, he began a series of illustrations focusing on national political conventions that continued until the start of the George W. Bush administration, in 2001.
In 1968, McMahon covered the Eugene McCarthy anti-war movement in New Hampshire, and as the movement traveled, he also documented the Democratic National Convention and Vietnam War protests in Grant Park, Chicago. From this experience, he created a documentary comprised of 400 drawings that ran on PBS. A few variations of the program were made for CBS Chicago in 1972, 1976, and 1978, which received three Emmys and a Peabody award.
Following the success of the documentary, McMahon, his wife, and children established a film distribution company called Rocinante Sight & Sound, named after Don Quixote’s horse. The Spanish novel, Don Quixote, which told the story of a noble on the journey to revive chivalry, reflected McMahon’s personal philosophy and values.
At age 90, Franklin McMahon died in his hometown of Chicago, due to a stroke. His life was long and full, and his legacy remains today due to his extensive publishing history and the written commentary of his children recalling his life. The World Is Your Studio: Travel Stories by Irene and Franklin McMahon, written by their daughter Deborah McMahon Osterholtz, is a compilation of travel stories and articles written by her parents. It includes a lesson created by Franklin McMahon for the Famous Artists School correspondence course. Margot McMahon’s book, Mac and Irene: A WWII Saga covers her father’s World War II story. Her second book, Resist, is a visual history of protest.
McMahon was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2001, and in 2000, he received a Martin Luther King Award for Civil Rights, among other honors. His art has been collected by The Art Institute of Chicago, The National Air and Space Museum, The Library of Congress, Norman Rockwell Museum, Brandywine River Museum, Chicago History Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others.
Essay by Halle Davies. A curatorial intern at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Davies is currently studying art history at Regent’s University in London, England. She also participated in the Gap Year Program at London’s Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Additions to this essay were made by Deborah McMahon Osterholtz.
Illustrations by Franklin McMahon
Additional Resources
Bibliography
Bibliography
Herman, Jon. “Franklin McMahonRESIST!: A Visual History of Protest.” Epiphany Center for the Arts, November 12, 2024. https://epiphanychi.com/franklin-mcmahon-resist-a-visual-history-of-protest/.
Martin, Douglas. “Franklin McMahon, Who Drew the News, Dies at 90.” The New York Times, March 8, 2012. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/us/franklin-mcmahon-who-drew-the-news-dies-at-90.html.
McMahon , Margot. “Franklin McMahon, The Man Who Drew History.” 2021. https://franklinmcmahon.net/.
McMahon , Mark. “Franklin McMahon.” Society of Illustrators, October 21, 2020. https://societyillustrators.org/award-winners/franklin-mcmahon/.
