Charles Andres

WELLS, Maine — Charles J. Andres, an illustrator and art teacher who was trained in and faithfully carried on the ideals of America's "Golden Age of Illustration," died on April 4, in York, Maine. He was 94 years old.

A memorial service will be held Sunday, July 27 at 4 p.m. at the Bibber Memorial Chapel in Wells.

Andres was born Sept. 6, 1913, in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., to Grace (née Rooney) and Charles Aloysius Andres.

He attended Regis High School, in New York City, the Severn School, in Annapolis, Md., and the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md. Andres attended the Art Students League and the Grand Central School of Art in New York City. His teachers included George Bridgeman and Harvey Dunn, heir to the rich legacy of the great American illustrators, Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth. In early 1941, recognizing the likelihood of war, Andres enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a common seaman. From his service in the North Atlantic on the USS Zircon (PY-16), a pleasure yacht that had been converted to a patrol vessel, Andres received a combat ribbon for engagement with the enemy before Pearl Harbor. The Navy soon put his artistic talents to work by reassigning Andres to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he painted covers for Sea Power magazine (a publication of the Navy League).

After World War II, Andres worked as an artist in the New York City area, including cover illustrations for the first paperbacks published by Bantam Books. In August of 1950, Andres married Jane Sutton, the widow of an old friend, and adopted Jane's two daughters from her previous marriage. The couple settled in Wells, Maine, where they lived together for 44 years, until Jane passed away in 1995.

Andres continued to work as a commercial illustrator until 1965, and occasionally painted portraits on commission through 1984. During the 1960s, he served on the Wells School Board.

In 1965, Andres began teaching art at Berwick Academy, in South Berwick, Maine. He continued to teach there until 1981. Although he valued and respected the techniques that are the tools of every competent artist, he recognized that the very essence of a painting is a pictorial idea and that the only purpose of any technique, however skillful, is to serve the pictorial idea. He would emphasize that every true pictorial idea is a visual abstraction — not a literary or a narrative idea, but an abstract image; and that a representational painting is no less abstract than an abstract painting; its very foundation is an abstraction. He would sometimes illustrate this by demonstrating how the abstract "bones" of a representational painting might look before being "fleshed out."

Andres is survived by a sister, Jane, of Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.; three sons, Charles of Harvard, Mass., Alan of Boston, Mass., and Mark of Portland, Ore.; two daughters, Mary-Hale, of Lansing, N.Y., and Susan of Los Angeles, Calif.; and five grandchildren.

There are no calling hours. A Celebration of his Life will be held on Sunday, July 27, at 4 p.m. at Bibber Memorial Chapel, 111 Chapel Road, Wells.

Arrangements are in care of Bibber Memorial Chapel, 111 Chapel Road, Wells, www.bibberfuneral.com.

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