The advertising icon of the Cluett, Peabody & Company's line of Arrow shirts from 1905 to 1930 was the era's symbol for the ideal athletic, austere, confident American man. He was the somewhat eroticized male counterpart to Charles Dana Gibson's equally emblematic and elegant all-American woman. No less a cultural spokesman than Theodore Roosevelt considered him to be a superb portrait of "the common man," although admittedly an Anglo-Saxon version of it that suited the times. This Arrow Collar Man was the inspiration of J(oseph) C(hristian) Leyendecker (1874-1951), the foremost American magazine illustrator of the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Born in Germany but emigrating at age eight with his parents, Leyendecker was trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris. He worked on advertising campaigns for Kuppenheimer suits as well as other products and did cover art for Collier's and...