John Wesley Dennis (16 May 1903–3 September 1966), illustrator, was born in Massachusetts, most likely in Boston, and was the son of Ida Morgan Dennis and John William Dennis, a newspaper pressman. He grew up at the family's Cape Cod farm and there developed a love of animals, especially horses. His mother reportedly wanted him to become a postmaster, but Dennis dropped out of high school to pursue an art career. His elder brother was a successful illustrator, and Wesley Dennis, as he was known professionally, later recalled that he obtained a job at the Boston American by passing off his brother's artwork as his own. He attended classes at the New School of Design, in Boston, and earned a living by illustrating newspaper advertisements and sketching fashions for such department stores as Filene's and Jordan Marsh.
Early in the 1930s Dennis studied equine anatomy in the butcher shops of Paris with a famed painter of animals, Lowes Dalbiac Luard. After returning to the United States he frequented racetracks and eventually began crafting portraits of racehorses for such patrons as Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt and Bing Crosby. Dennis joined the cavalry of the Massachusetts National Guard in order to study horses and to indulge what became a lifetime passion for polo.
On 5 April 1931, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, Dennis married Olive E. Jenkins Garland, a widow with two children. After they divorced in 1935, he married Dorothy Schiller Boggs in Newton, Massachusetts, on 15 March 1940. They had two sons. While traveling in New Mexico, Dennis met an editor of children's literature who suggested that he write and illustrate a book. Flip (1941), about a playful colt, received enthusiastic reviews, and Flip and the Cows appeared the following year.
Dennis considered himself an illustrator, not an artist. His body of work also encompassed cartoons, Christmas cards, company calendars, stationery, and covers and stories for newspapers and magazines. Esquire commissioned from him a series of illustrations of famous horses, published in 1941 and 1942. They attracted the attention of the art collector Walter Percy Chrysler (1909–1988), who invited Dennis to his Virginia estate near Warrenton to paint portraits of his thoroughbreds. By 1945 Dennis and his family had settled in Warrenton, where he raced horses and rode with local fox-hunting clubs. At Oakwood, his Fauquier County farm, Dennis kept as pets several horses, birds (including a goose named Asthma and an emu named Oikwood), dogs, cats, and a chimpanzee, many of which served as models for his illustrations. He spent summers in Buzzards Bay, where he maintained a studio.
After the writer Marguerite Henry, in search of an illustrator for Justin Morgan Had a Horse (1945), saw Flip at her local library, she began a long, fruitful partnership with Dennis. Many of the pair's sixteen books became classics of children's literature, including King of the Wind (1948), winner of the John Newbery Medal.
In 1946 Henry and Dennis visited Chincoteague Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia to soak up local color and to witness the annual Pony Penning, during which wild horses from Assateague Island are herded across the channel to the town of Chincoteague. The result was their most famous collaboration, Misty of Chincoteague (1947), followed by Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague (1949), and Stormy, Misty's Foal (1963). The fact-based story of Misty, born to wild horses on Assateague in 1946 and purchased at the Pony Penning by the Beebe family, captured the hearts of children around the world and was translated into at least half a dozen languages. In reality, Misty was owned by Marguerite Henry and lived for several years at the author's place in Illinois. She eventually sent the famous horse back to Chincoteague and the Beebe family.
In 1946 Dennis illustrated a new edition of Anna Sewell's 1877 novel Black Beauty. He also collaborated with John Steinbeck on an illustrated edition of The Red Pony (1945), with Margaret Cabell Self on The Horseman's Companion (1949), and with Jocelyn Arundel on several titles, including Simba of the White Mane (1958), Jingo: Wild Horse of Abaco (1959), Dugan and the Hobo (1960), Mighty Mo: The Story of an African Elephant (1961), Whitecap's Song (1962), Shoes for Punch (1964), and Wildlife of Africa (1965). During his twenty-five-year career Dennis illustrated more than eighty books, including his own Holiday (1946), Flip and the Morning (1951), A Crow I Know (1957), and Tumble: The Story of a Mustang (1966). To correspond with the youthful readers who often wrote him, he offered subscriptions to "Denny Cards," which featured his artwork on the front and a message on the back.
John Wesley Dennis completed his last book a few weeks before his death at a hospital in Falmouth, Massachusetts, on 3 September 1966. His remains were cremated.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Anne Commire, ed., Something about the Author (1980), 18:70–74 (portrait on 70, variant birthplace of Falmouth, Mass., and erroneous death date of 5 Sept. 1966), Kirk Mariner, Once Upon an Island: The History of Chincoteague (1996), 161–162, and Lisa Campbell, "Inspired Animations: The Art of Wesley Dennis," Middleburg Life 19 (Sept. 2001): 7–8; Massachusetts Marriage Certificate, Town of Bourne, 1:72 (with birthplace of Boston, Mass.); second marriage date confirmed by town clerk, Newton, Mass.; Dennis scrapbooks and illustrations at National Sporting Library, Middleburg, Virginia; other Dennis illustrations in Wesley Dennis Papers, Children's Literature Research Collections, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and in Misty of Chincoteague Collection (1946–1963), Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville; feature articles in Falmouth [Mass.] Enterprise, 17 Aug. 1956, Washington Evening Star, 11 Jan. 1959, Warrenton Fauquier Democrat, 13 Oct. 1960, and Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star, 12 June 2004; Marguerite Henry, The Illustrated Marguerite Henry (1980), 7–21 (portraits), 86–88; Julie A. Campbell, The Horse in Virginia: An Illustrated History (2010), 232–233; obituaries in Hyannis Cape Cod Standard-Times, New York Times, Richmond News Leader, Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Washington Post, all 5 Sept. 1966, and Warrenton Fauquier Democrat, 8 Sept. 1966.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Julie A. Campbell.
How to cite this page:
Julie A. Campbell,"John Wesley Dennis (1903–1966)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2019 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dennis_John_Wesley, accessed [today's date]).
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