through the eyes
of an artist ...
By Marcy Shortuse Photos and images provided
There is something about Florida that brings
out the artist in many people who never
thought they would ever want to paint,
and brings about new inspiration for artists of
renown. So it was with Larry Stults, a boy from
the Midwest who made it big early on in his life
with his dramatic artistic ability and came to our
coast of Florida to spend the second part of his
days on this earth.
The differences between his commercial work
and his retirement work are vast. While one style
celebrates elegant living of the Roaring 20s in
vivid and crisp detail, his watercolors of Cabbage
Key fishermen and landscapes are more
impressionistic. His pencil illustrations of old
fishing houses show his love for the laidback living
of the Florida coast, a far cry from the busy
streets of Chicago and New York.
Self portrait of
Larry Stults
Larry’s birth certificate names him as Elwin Martin
Stults Jr., born in Orwell, Ohio on July 19, 1899. It was
during his college years he took “Larry” as the name
he would use for the rest of his life. He attended and
graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology
in Pittsburgh in 1922 with his Bachelor’s degree in
fine arts. He then traveled to Massachusetts to study
under Charles Webster Hawthorne in Provincetown.
Stults moved to Chicago in 1923 and his career in
advertising illustration immediately took off. He
joined the firm of Stevens and Sundblom and his very
specific style of art was immediately noticed by the
world. He started illustrating for the very popular
Hupmobile Automobile Company in 1926. The 13
advertisements for that company put him on coffee
tables in many households worldwide in magazines
such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and the Saturday