Beach Outing, Liberty Magazine cover

Founded in 1924, Liberty magazine billed itself as “A Weekly for Everybody,” and quickly reached a circulation of several million. It offered readers a mix of short fiction, celebrity profiles, human-interest stories, humor, and current events. In 1926, Leslie Thrasher signed an ambitious contract to produce one cover per week for Liberty over six years. Beach Outing, created that year, embraces gentle humor: an elegant young woman lounges on the sand beneath a deep-blue parasol while her gangly boyfriend clutches a life jacket—both turning to appraise a strapping lifeguard who has just appeared behind them. 

Born in West Virginia, Thrasher moved to Philadelphia as a teenager to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and later won a scholarship to study in Paris. In 1910 he joined the studio of renowned illustrator Howard Pyle in Wilmington, Delaware. 

Thrasher’s first Saturday Evening Post cover appeared in 1912, launching a prolific career. Known for his bright, animated scenes of everyday American life, he produced twenty-three Post covers and many others for Everybody’s, Collier’s, Red Book, and Popular Magazine, as well as advertisements for Chesterfield Cigarettes, Cream of Wheat, DuPont, and Fisk Tire. 

During World War I, Thrasher served in a camouflage unit in France, where he suffered lung damage from poison gas. After returning home, he settled in New York and, beginning in 1926, created his celebrated Liberty series “For the Love o’ Lil,” which followed the comical trials of a middle-class couple modeled partly on himself. 

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