Fogg and Steam

We owe the title of our post today to a book of the same name written by Frank Clodfelter in 1978 about the railroad artwork of Howard Fogg, Class of 1938. Fogg was born one hundred years ago today on April 7th, 1917, in Brooklyn, New York. An only child, Fogg and his family soon relocated in 1920 to Mountain Lakes, New Jersey, where he first became entranced by steam locomotives moving down the old Lackawanna Railroad, before he finally settled outside of Chicago in 1923.

Fogg entered Dartmouth in the fall of 1934 as a member of the class

of 1938 and graduated with a degree in English. After his sojourn in New Hampshire, he went back to Illinois to earn a degree from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts with the intention of becoming a political cartoonist. However, while still in art school, Fogg sold his first train painting for $25. Soon after, he abandoned his aspirations of political cartooning and took a job with the Union Pacific Railroad, all the while painting and selling watercolors of trains in his spare time. He then found employment as an apprentice engineer with Baldwin Locomotive Works, although his stay there was brief: in 1941, Fogg was drafted into the military, became a second lieutenant in the Army Air Force, and flew seventy-six missions as a fighter pilot in World War II.

During the war, Fogg married Margot Dethier; after moving to Summit, New Jersey, they had three sons while Fogg's true career began as the company artist for the American Locomotive Company (Alco) in 1946. At that point, Fogg began an impressive run of prodigious output, averaging nearly thirty railroad paintings a year for decades afterward. He and his family later moved to Boulder, Colorado, where Fogg would continue to pursue his passion for trains by becoming a very successful and well-respected freelance artist. He died on October 1st, 1996, in his adopted town of Boulder, Colorado. He was one of five honorary members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, a designation that underscored the high regard which working railroaders had for his dedication to detail and accuracy in his paintings.

To leaf through Fogg and Steam, come to Rauner and ask for Alumni F688f. To read more about Howard Fogg's time at Dartmouth, ask for his alumni file. We would like to thank Jeff Ashworth '71 for bringing Fogg and his 100th birthday to our attention. For more about the captivating art of Howard Fogg '38, he recommends Ronald C. Hill and Al Chione's The Railroad Artistry of Howard Fogg, published in 1999. To read more about Fogg's experiences as a fighter pilot during World War II, read Richard and Janet Fogg's Fogg in the Cockpit, published in 2011.

Adrift in the Soviet Era

In May of 1937, four Soviet scientists and their faithful dog were set down on the ice in the Arctic Ocean with supplies (five tons of food!) and an insulated tent in an endeavor to better understand drifting ice and the dynamics of Arctic waters. After 274 days and innumerable measurements of water and air temperatures, wind speeds and water depths, they were picked up by icebreakers over 2,800 kilometers from where they started.

Throughout their drift, they took photographs and these were turned over to one of Stalin's favorite designers, Alexander Rodchenko, and fellow constructivist artist Varvara Stepanova. In their hands, the photographs were transformed into photo montages that sought to accent the heroic qualities of the expedition and celebrate it as "A Feat Worthy of the Age of Stalin." They managed to make what must have been an extremely boring expedition (over nine months of drifting on the ice) into a dynamic, exciting event. You can see it all in their Podvig, Dostoinyi Stalinskoi Epokhi: Fhotoseriya (Moscow: Soyuzfoto Fotokhudozhnik, 1938).

We haven't cataloged this yet, but when we do, we will add a link to the catalog record here.
UPDATE: to see it, ask for Stef G630.R8 P638 1938