Sometimes you have to take a guess about a card as to whether it was drawn by McGill or not because many of his designs were unsigned.
Once you 'get your eye in' to McGill's style it can be relatively straightforward to spot one of his cards but his style did vary, especially in his early works, and these can be more difficult to recognise.
One short cut to identifying his work is to go by the publisher of the card but even that can be confusing. Although McGill worked for many different publishers in his career he is mostly identified with three - Joseph Asher & Co., Inter-Art Co. and D.Constance Ltd. (You could also add the Woolstone Bros. 'Milton' cards but these were reprints of Inter-Art Co. designs.)
Some people who do not know McGill very well often presume that if the card is by one of these publishers and is unsigned then it must be a McGill. That is definitely not the case. It is very common to see cards misidentified in this way, take a look at some of the cards offered on eBay for a start.
Yes, the majority of the cards by these three companies were by McGill but they also issued cards by other designers and if they are unsigned too it can make identification difficult. Joseph Asher & Co., for example, published cards by E.Chandler (quite a lot by him), Syd, Will Adams, Reg Carter and Jacobus some of which were unsigned.
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Three examples of non-McGill cards from Joseph Asher & Co.
E.Chandler - Syd - Unknown Artist |
The Inter-Art Co., produced thousands of cards by many different artists. However most of McGill's were part of the 'Comique' series except for most of his 1914-18 War cards which were issued under assorted series headings and a few under the 'Artistique' heading. To make things really difficult a huge number of the 'Comique' series of cards were published without an artist's signature. Identifying these can be just a 'gut' reaction to the style!
One other artist who drew for Inter-Art Co. was Dudley Buxton whose cards are regularly misidentified as being by McGill. This is understandable in many cases because their styles were very similar although Buxton tended to draw his characters faces in a much more exaggerated and 'cartoon-y' way than McGill. I have bought some cards which at first I thought were McGill but as time has gone on I am not so sure or in some cases I am now certain they are actually by Buxton.
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| Three examples of Dudley Buxton cards |
Fred Spurgin (a very prolific artist) and Phil Martin also drew for Inter-Art Co. and their designs can sometimes be similar in style to McGill.
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| This card by Phil Martin is very similar to some designed by McGill |
D.Constance Ltd. was pretty much set up to publish McGill's cards which they did from the mid-1930s through to the 1960s. But even this company had other artists working for them. There are definitely cards under the Constance 'New Donald McGill Comics' imprint by Stocker Shaw and another unidentified artist. I'd be interested to know if there are any others during this time frame.
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| Three examples of Stocker Shaw cards published by D.Constance Ltd. |
So, there is no sure fire way of identifying McGill cards if they are not signed. In some cases you can only take an informed guess. I'm sure there are cards out there that haven't been spotted as being by McGill because they are in a slightly different style to his 'usual' output.
