Portrait of Lee Le Blanc by Deirdre Le Blanc (© Deirdre Le Blanc; used with the artist's  permission)

George Lee Le Blanc was born October 5, 1913 in Powers, Michigan, a small logging town in the Upper Peninsula. His parents were Vincent Ferrier Le Blanc and Alice Charbonneau Le Blanc. He had an older sister, Cecile.

The family moved to Crosby, Minnesota to join Vincent's brother and his family, but returned to Michigan some years later, settling in Iron River. Vincent took a job as the butcher for Angeli's Market, where he worked for many years.

From early childhood Lee continually sketched and painted. While in high school he worked as a cook at the lumber camps around Iron River during the summer months. America was in the depths of the Great Depression.

Although everyone admired Lee's artistic talent, most were of the same opinion: Better stay with the loggers, or get a job at the iron mines. You'll never earn a living making pretty pictures.

The strongest yearning young Le Blanc had, other than art, was the search for other philosophies and the larger world outside Michigan. He secretly hid and read books that his parents, especially his mother Alice, would think unsuitable for a young Catholic man. He read Plato, Aristotle, and other philosophies, books about American Indians, mythology, and biographies of classical artists. Since there was no one in Iron River with whom he could discuss any of these subjects, and no place to study art or earn a living at it, he saved his money for the day he would graduate Iron River High School - the day he would leave and venture out into the world. That day came in 1931.

Dad and his friend Joe Tipton hopped on freight cars, traveling back and forth across the American plains. They took odd jobs just so they could eat. They stood in soup lines in the larger cities when a job couldn't be found. John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" was one of Dad's favorite novels. He had lived it. He saw and spoke to families just like the ones Steinbeck wrote about.

Lee first studied art at the Jack Wiggins Trade School after arriving in Los Angeles. But soon he was upset because he couldn't find work even as a simple illustrator. He and his friend Joe took off and headed for New York where Lee thought he could land a job as a commercial artist. After three weeks Dad decided that New York wasn't for him, and he headed for Philadelphia.

To earn money, he tended bar in a closet in a speakeasy at night, and studied at La France Art Institute during the day. Then he took a job waiting tables in an Italian restaurant, and eventually married Antoinette, the daughter of the owners. A year after their son Francis Caron Le Blanc was born, Dad begged Antoinette to leave with him for Los Angeles. He was never going to be an artist if he stayed to work for her parents. They wanted to groom him to take over the restaurant, and Lee soon learned that their attitude about earning money as an artist was that the golden age of art was dead. It died with the Impressionists, and besides, this wasn't France. Lee argued that there were many artists earning a damned fine living by illustrating, and named a few: Dean Cornwell, Maxfield Parrish, N. C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, Daniel Content, John La Gatta.

Dad explained to Antoinette that he had to leave if there was any chance of him becoming an artist, but Antoinette was too afraid to make the trip. People were starving. There were no jobs. How would they be able to take care of Frankie, their son? Didn't Lee see that he was chasing an impossible dream?

Dad left Philadelphia in 1937, telling Antoinette that he would send for her and Frankie when he was settled into a good job.

Riding the rails through Texas, Dad was rousted by the police, because he fit the description of Clyde Barrow, who was known to be in the area after having just robbed a bank in a nearby town. The police released Lee in a few hours, however, when they realized he wasn't their man.

Outside Los Angeles, he and Joe Tipton took a job at the Governor Mine in Acton, CA mining gold for the son of California's first governor Peter H. Burnett (1849-1851). From digging out the ore to smelting the metal into ingots, they worked long days under the desert sun to make enough money for the rest of the trip to Los Angeles, with enough to tide them over for a while.

In Los Angeles, Dad soon landed a job with Western Lithography as a commercial artist. He was living with his father's sister Min and her husband in Arcadia, a suburb of Los Angeles. To earn extra money to continue studying art, he was also pouring drinks at his uncle's bar The Tack Room, which was near Santa Anita Racetrack.

Rufus Hummingbirds by Lee Le Blanc (Image © Deirdre Le Blanc Private Collection; used with permission)

One day in 1940 an attractive woman with a keen sense of humor sat down at the bar, and she and Dad struck up a conversation. The next weekend the same lady appeared again. Eventually Dad told her he was an artist, but wanted to quit the dead-end job he had at Western Litho. She asked to see some of his work. The next time she entered the bar, Dad showed her some of his drawings and paintings. The lady recognized talent when she saw it, and decided to help Lee get a job in the studios. Her name was Helene Costello, Dolores Costello's sister who had been married to John Barrymore, and both being actresses, they had some clout.

Dad's first job in the studios was with Walt Disney, where he made a whopping $10.00 a week. After that he held slightly higher paying jobs at Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies.

In the meantime, Dad divorced Antoinette and married Helene Costello. They were soon going to have a child, and Dolores realized that Lee needed a really good paying job. Through friends, she was able to get him into the Special Effects Department at Twentieth-Century Fox.

His first job was building miniatures. When Dad was younger his true ambition had been to be sculptor, but during the depression no one was hiring sculptors to design huge bronze statues, and Lee quickly learned that he would have to concentrate on his talent for sketching and painting. Now Dad wanted to paint more than anything, and the Matte artists were earning of good living. He spent every spare moment downstairs in the Matte Painting Department, talking to the artists and getting to know Fred Sersen, the head of the department, until he finally talked his way in as an apprentice painter.

On the weekends, Lionel Barrymore and my father made plein air excursions along the California coast and San Pedro. Most of Lionel's studies for his etchings were done during this time, and Dad was perfecting his use of light.

It was about this time that Dad dropped the name George, and began signing his name Lee Le Blanc, which was a name he preferred anyway. He related a story to me that a lot of the Taos artists decided to change their names until they began painting pictures that would sell. Eric Sloane (1905-1985), while lunching with other students and art teachers George Luks and John Sloan, discussed the fact that young artists should paint under an assumed name while they perfected their style and craft, so that their early, inferior paintings would not be attached to them. Eric was born Everard Jean Hindricks, and he immediately changed his name to Eric Sloane, using the last name to honor to his mentor John, adding the e at the end to be different. Luks and Sloan felt these young artists could always change their names back when they were finally established. Dad said this backfired with Eric Sloane, whose paintings sold so well that he didn't have time to change his name back to his real name, but I'm not so sure. Eric always felt that Hindricks was a difficult name to pronounce correctly, and he preferred Sloane.

My Aunt Delores had since divorced John Barrymore, and married Dr. John Vruwynk, the head of the Obstetrical Department at Good Samaritan Hospital on Wilshire Blvd. Vruwynk had delivered both of Dolores' children, Dolores Mae and John, Jr., by John Barrymore, and he delivered me on February 18, 1941.

America went to war, and Dad joined the Merchant Marines. Mother was in a sanitarium for tuberculosis, so I went to live with my Aunt. I was a little over two years old. By the time the war ended Dad and Mom decided to divorce, but the battle for who would gain custody of me became a benchmark case. The decision wasn't reached until I was 7 years old, and Dad had won. He moved his parents to West Los Angeles to care for me, while he worked at Fox, many times six days a week, which was not unusual then.

It was during this period (1948-49) that Lee was commissioned to draw and illuminate several maps for Admiral Perry. It was almost impossible for artists to buy gold leaf after the war, as the Navy had stockpiled it. Dad told Perry, if he had any influence with the Navy, he'd like to be paid in gold leaf. Perry had no problem obtaining enough leaf to last Lee a lifetime, and that was how he was paid for the job.

Dad, at this time, was studying under Nikolai Fetchin, an imigre from Russia, and a fantastic artist, who eventually moved to New Mexico. Fetchin was teaching a technique of painting on rough, unsealed gesso, with no varnish on the finished painting. It was here that Dad's brush strokes became looser, and he was able to leave the "tight" style that is required in Matte paintings. Dad never painted that loosely again, but his style was definitely influenced by Fetchin. He bought several charcoal prints of Fetchin's works while he studied under him, and many year's later I was able to make him a gift of a book about Fetchin.

Within the year Dad was introduced to a Russian, Rosalia Platonova, through fellow matte artist Emil Kosa, Jr. (son of Emil Kosa, a noted watercolorist) at one of the Monday night gallery openings along La Cienega Blvd. In six months Dad and Rosalia got married, which was to be Dad's worst nightmare.

Grandpa and Grandma Le Blanc returned to Iron River, and I was put in convent school. Rosalia, who could speak little English, refused to have anything to do with either me or Dad. All she wanted was her citizenship, and she was paranoid that the NKVD, the precursor of the KGB, was going to snatch her up and return her to Russia. She refused to give Dad a divorce after their separation, and continually dragged him into court for the next nine years. Dad took an apartment over Fred Sersen's garage until he could afford to get a place of his own. Paying my mother's support and now Rosalia's as well, left him virtually broke, and he could no longer pay the tuition for boarding school.

I went to live with my Mother for a year. I was nine-and-a-half. During this time Dad began a friendship with Gwendolyn Reed, a woman who worked in the Fox Publicity Department. At the end of the year spent with Mother, I was enrolled at Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy in Pasadena, and Dad had moved in with Gwen and her mother in a triplex they owned in West Los Angeles.

Finally, because of Rosalia calling the judge a name in court one day, Dad's support for her was cut to one dollar a year, paid on April 1st. However, if Rosalia filed for hardship, Dad was made to go to court again. He could own nothing in his own name, or she would claim half of it. His car was bought in Gwen's name.

Dad continued to paint for himself in a little studio he built onto the garage in back of the triplex. I can remember spending long hours on the weekends in there watching Dad paint, and reading books that he placed on the shelves: "The Art Spirit" by Robert Henri, "Confessions" by St. Augustine, Plato's "Republic", "Dead Souls" by Golgo; Tolstoy's "Brothers Karamozov"; Dante's "Divine Comedy", illustrated by Gustav Dore; Hendrik Willem Van Loon's "The Arts"; Vasari's "Lives of the Artists", as well as his collection of Skira art books on Hiroshigi, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, etc., plus collections of poetry. His favorite poem was William Cullen Bryant's "Thanantopsis". He also had a book on the surrealist Eugene Berman, who had designed sets for the New York City Ballet. He owned another book full of photographs about Martha Graham.

Dad loved classical music. He took me to my first opera, "Rigoletto" when I was nine, and to see Dame Edith Fontaine in her last dance performance in "The Firebird" seven years later. Lee's favorite symphony was Dvorak's 5th, or New World Symphony, and he was enthralled by any piece of Lizt's. He loved the piano, and even took lessons for a while when I was in my teens, but he quickly realized he had no musical talent.

Dad's dream was to be able to design and build his own home some day, and he began collecting Architectural Digest magazines. In his spare time he would draw floor plans, and then build magnificent model homes out of balsa wood. The roofs lifted off so you could see inside, and he designed and carved all the furnishings, and made all the landscaping. He even added lights. These generated such an interest at the studio that producers, directors, and department heads ordered them for their little girls as dollhouses.

African Widow Bird, gouache by Lee Le Blanc (Image © Deirdre Le Blanc Private Collection; used with permission)

In 1954 Dad was sent to South Africa to get film research for the movie "Untamed", starring Tyrone Power and Susan Hayworth. The trip was somewhat dangerous, as it was during the Mau Mau uprising. A few years later in 1956, Lee would be working on the film "Something of Value", staring Sidney Poitier, based on Robert Ruark's book about these events.

The summer of 1955 Dad decided to pack up Gwen and me and drive back to Iron River for a vacation. I met cousins I didn't even know existed, and after tromping through the woods, we went out at night with flashlights to grab night crawlers so we could fish the next day. We also met Lucille Anderson and her husband, a couple who offered guided fishing and hunting trips to folks from Chicago and other big cities. Lucille also made money doing the taxidermy for their clients' trophies.

During this time Dad carved the large wood escutcheon for the new Flintridge auditorium that was being built after the new high school was finished. He had already built and painted a large creche made from plywood that used to sit in the Flintridge lobby during the Christmas season.

Dad had not been happy at Fox for quite a while. Ray Kellogg had taken over the Matte Painting Department after Fred Sersen retired, and he wasn't an artist himself, which did not sit well with Dad, Emil, Matthew Yuricich and the other artists. In 1955 Dad went hunting for another job, but now he was looking for one that would make him the head of the department. He finally landed the position as head of Matte Painting at MGM, where Alfred Newcomb, a most eccentric man, was about to retire. Lee would be working closely with the Head of Special Effects, Buddy Gillespie who had won the Academy Award for his miniature work for the "Wizard of Oz".

Dad ordered Newcomb's office fumigated before he would move in, because Newcomb would take a cup of coffee, if it had grown cold, and just fling it across the room. The walls and floors were stained with splashes of old coffee, and the place was mess. Newcomb also had the strange habit of keeping dozens of brand new white socks in his bottom desk drawer. He would take off the two pairs he was wearing, throw away the ones that had been next to his skin, put back on the ones that had been on top, and then put a brand new pair over those.

During the summer of 1956 Dad made another trip to Michigan to look for property.

In January of 1957 my mother died, just one month short of my sixteenth birthday. Near the end of the school term Flintridge was putting on a production of "The Taming of the Shrew", and I had helped paint the sets. It was the first time Dad ever came to anything I was involved in at school in the four years I was there, and I was to go home for the weekend. He took me out to a nice dinner, and asked me if I would be interested in going to public school the next year. He was leaving Gwendolyn, and was thinking of getting an apartment. After dinner we drove to Playa del Rey so that Dad could show me the place he was interested in. Once inside the two-bedroom apartment, I knew he had already rented it. His easel and painting cabinet stood off the living room in the dining area. I was very enthusiastic about helping keep house for Dad. It was just a short jaunt down the street to the Pacific Ocean.

During the next two years Dad was painting anything to do with outdoor activities: fishing, hunting, boating, etc. He has submitting these to various sporting magazines, like Field and Stream, to see if he could get some work illustrating for them.

That summer, while I was at summer camp, Dad made another trip to Michigan where Lucille Anderson helped Dad find a lovely piece of property on Brule Lake, just outside Iron River, Michigan. During the previous year's trip, she and Dad fell in love. Shortly thereafter, Lou began divorce proceedings.

Lee's great dream was about to come true. He would leave the studios, leave California where he couldn't get a divorce from the crazy Russian, marry Lou, return to Iron River, build his own home, and paint for himself.

In 1962 Dad quit MGM, sold the house he and Lucille they had bought and remodeled, and headed for Reno to set up residence so Dad could divorce Rosalia.

Lucille and Dad moved in with his parents until they completed the building of their house. The first years on Brule Lake were very difficult. Dad had gone from an excellent paying job in a big city to trying to make it as an illustrator at a lot less money in a place where there was little to offer for amusement. He took jobs with calendar companies Shedd-Brown, and Brown and Bigelow, to earn enough to keep food in the their stomachs. Many of the embellished illuminations that he did for the calendar companies were gilded with some of the gold leaf Admiral Perry had given Dad back in the late 40s.

Here he was, in his fifties, with a new wife and baby daughter Patricia, and no easy way to make a decent living. Without Lucille to constantly bolstered his ambition when it was dwindling, I don't think he would have stuck with it.

Lee Le Blanc's studio (Image © Deirdre Le Blanc Private Collection; used with permission)

Dad began to paint wildlife scenes, thinking that this might be the answer. He had always admired Carl Rungius, and was beginning to study the works of other wildlife artists. Forget about putting people in paintings, he was going to paint portraits of animals and birds. With his greatest interest swinging toward duck paintings, he took courses in ornithology at Cornell.

Lee was also illustrating children's books for Oddo, a small publishing company. Lucille even wrote one of the books that Dad illustrated.

Finally, with a varied collection of his latest wildlife works in hand, Lee drove to a nearby hunt club, and asked the owner if he might like to hang the paintings, and if any sold, the owner could take a commission. A deal was struck.

Now, Dad was always lucky at cards. It was uncanny. I really disliked playing cards with him, because he was so lucky. But, here, his luck would prove even greater. One night, while the family was eating dinner, the phone rang. A man asked for Lee Le Blanc, and Lucille handed Dad the phone. The man introduced himself as Mac MacArthur, a name that meant nothing to Dad, and said he had just bought two of Dad's paintings at the hunt club, and he wanted to know if Lee had any others. Dad told him, "Sure, come on over and take a look at them".

Dishes were cleared and Lou put on a fresh pot of coffee. Mac arrived, a big man with a winning smile. He went into Dad's studio, looked at the paintings, then they went back out to the living room where Lou served coffee and homemade pie. Mac wanted to know if Dad and Lou had ever thought of opening their own gallery.

"Yes", Lee told him, "they had been looking at some real estate."

Mac asked them if they had ever heard of Minocqua, Wisconsin.

Coincidentally, Dad told him, they had just been there the previous weekend, but didn't find anything to their liking.

Mac said, "Well, I have a piece for sale, right on the Boardwalk, that you might find interesting."

Dad said, "I wouldn't mind seeing it."

Mac said he would show it to them the next Saturday, and they would be his and his wife Fran's guests at the country club for dinner.

The next Saturday Dad, Lou, and Tricia made the one-hour drive to Minocqua to see Mac's building. The place was perfect. There was plenty of room in front for the gallery with a view of the lake, with a two-bedroom apartment in the rear, and room to add on.

Mac asked them, "What do you think?"

Dad replied, "It would work very well," then hesitantly he added, "but how much do you want for a down payment?"

Mac said, "Five paintings."

Stellar Eiders, oil by Lee Le Blanc (Image © Deirdre Le Blanc Private Collection; used with permission)

As they were to learn, Mac MacArthur was affectionately known as "The Minkskinner". He was the second largest mink rancher in the United States, and a distant cousin of Douglas MacArthur, but most importantly he was an avid art collector. When other wildlife art collectors heard that Mac was buying Lee Le Blanc paintings, the phone began ringing - and Dad never looked back.

Dad painted, and Lucille ran the business. While not always a match made in heaven, perhaps, it was an extremely good relationship.

Many years after his success, I was painting for the Le Blanc Wildlife Gallery, and went back for a visit. I was also working in the MGM Production Department at this time. One evening Dad advised me to take more field trips, visit more galleries, especially in the Mid West and throughout the South. "Yeah, I said, "I just need a Lou." Not understanding, Dad asked, "What?" I said, "Look, Dad, I'm trying to raise my daughter by myself, I've got to pay rent, and I don't have anyone to stay at home and tend to business. You've got your meals prepared, the house cleaned, the laundry done, and Lou runs the gallery. She keeps track of all your commissions and obligations, and all you have to do is paint. All I need is a Lou." He admitted that he wouldn't know what he'd do without her.

Arkansas Duck Stamp with gouache remarque by Lee Le Blanc (Image © Deirdre Le Blanc Private Collection; used with permission)

Lee won the coveted 1973-74 Federal Duck Stamp, after tying second place the year before. He won First of State Arkansas, First of State South Carolina, a Turkey Stamp for Texas, Ducks Unlimited Artist of the Year, and numerous other honors and awards. In Arkansas he is honored by Nature Conservancy with a memorial bronze plaque for the work he did to save the wetlands there.

His last print was for the New York Conservation Commemorative stamp. Because of a recent stroke, Dad could not do the 100 required color remarques that had been ordered, so he asked me to do them. That is probably the most difficult job I've ever done. Dad was dying, and I was painting the remarques between trips to the Marshfield, Wisconsin Clinic to relieve Lou's many hours spent at his bedside, and to donate plasma that he needed. Dad was dying of onset leukemia, which was caused from over twenty years of working in his studio with an opened can of paint thinner. He had begun using thinner when he decided it was too expensive to buy and ship in gallon cans of rectified turpentine from Detroit or Chicago.

Among Lee's many private commissions are those painted for David Rockefeller and Senator Strom Thurman. He was among the artists invited to the White House to commemorate 50 years of the Federal Duck Stamp while Ronald Reagan was President.

Entrance to the Lee Le Blanc Wildlife Art Gallery, Caspian, Michigan (Image © Paige Wooten, granddaughter of Lee Le Blanc)

After Dad's death in 1988, Iron River residents got the idea to honor their native son even further by building the Le Blanc Wildlife Art Gallery as an adjunct to the Iron County Museum in Caspian, Michigan.

Members of the building committee were Ellie Coles, a friend and neighbor on Brule Lake, Harold and Marcia Bernhardt, Andy Busakowski, Jim and Delores Sepletal, Andy Davis, and Anna Mae Gugliotto, then President of the Miners State Bank, who spent many long hours going after the necessary grants to open the museum. In addition there were many friends and business people who donated to the funding and building of the museum. Among them are Lee and Lou's lifelong friends the Angeli and Petrucelli families. Lucille spent hours framing prints and suggesting how the retrospective paintings should be exhibited.

I donated several matte paintings that Dad had done while at MGM, after rescuing them from the trash when Kirk Kerkorian was shutting down most of the departments at the studio. In addition, I was asked to paint a portrait of my father to be hung in the entry between the two portraits of his parents that Dad did in the late forties, which I completed a few months before the museum opened. The opening was a grand occasion, and I would like to again thank everyone who had a hand in seeing it come to fruition, and to all of those who are still working hard to keep it open.

Dad helped a lot of young artists who came to him for support or advice, and who are, today, recognized for their talent. I've met several, and all of them have told me how they appreciated his guidance and friendship. Lee was always willing to take the time to help any young, serious artist.

Lee Le Blanc, 1913-1988 (Image © Deirdre Le Blanc Private Collection; used with permission)

From Your Guide: Deirdre Le Blanc is a pysanky artist, painter, craftswoman and writer who lives in the Greater Los Angeles area. She is also the daughter of renowned wildlife artist Lee Le Blanc, who is lovingly remembered here. Images contained within this article are copyright of Deirdre Le Blanc, and used with her kind permission.