We can count on the fact that art history’s biggest names were also some of the most talented of their time. The opposite is another story. For every Vermeer, Monet, and Pollock, there were hundreds of artists with something to say and endless talents to say it. But because of their gender or race, or because of vagaries of the art market, or just because art history textbooks can only be so long, they didn’t become household names. Enter Joseph Christian Leyendecker, an American illustrator who might have lost his bid to be the preeminent commercial artist of the 20th century because he helped sculpt the man who took his place: Norman Rockwell. In honor of Leyendecker and a new batch of his works, let’s get acquainted with the man.

1. He was Rockwell before Rockwell

Rockwell rose to fame for the covers he drew for The Saturday Evening Post, illustrations that were at once hyperrealistic and kinetic. But before Rockwell joined the staff, Leyendecker pioneered that very type of drawing. (Even on the leaderboards, Rockwell took the top spot; he eventually contributed 323 covers, with Leyendecker coming short by one, at 322.) The similarities in style between the two were no coincidence. When Rockwell was still a young illustrator, he dreamed of one thing: getting his work on the cover of the Post, where his idol, Leyendecker, worked. In Rockwell’s autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator, he has no shame about his admiration. Eager to learn more about the Post’s star, he’d “followed [Leyendecker] around town just to see how he acted … I’d ask the models what Mr. Leyendecker did when he was painting. Did he stand up or sit down? Did he talk to the models? What kind of brushes did he use? Did he use Winsor & Newton paints?”

2. He was formally trained but commercial from the beginning

With his brother, Francis (Frank), Leyendecker studied at both the Chicago Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris. There they were taken with Art Nouveau artists such as Alphonse Mucha, as well as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret. Upon moving back to the States, Leyendecker got his first Post cover in 1899 while living in Chicago but moved with his siblings to New York, the heart of the commercial art world. There he got work from a variety of companies, though none more significant than Cluett Peabody & Company, for which he drew his Arrow Collar Man.

3. He defined what it meant to be a fashionable man

With commissions like the Arrow Collar Man (as well as other illustrations he drew for clothing companies), Leyendecker fundamentally created the image of an all-American male in the first few decades of the 20th century. Like today’s adverts, it was aspirational not just in terms of making consumers want the product but also in making them want to be the model. Without all the imagery we have today (digital and otherwise), Leyendecker’s males—tall and distinguished with a firm jaw and a distant look in their eyes—were one of the few aesthetic idols available to American men and boys. Of course, Leyendecker couldn’t have illustrated every advertisement out there, but as commercial illustration came into its own, it’s fair to say that he inspired an industry of copycats. His touch was everywhere.

4. His model was his biggest secret

It’s slightly ironic that Leyendecker defined the aspirational male because a key part of his identity would likely have been shunned while he lived. For most of his adult life, he cohabitated with Charles Beach, in what many biographers have assumed to be a gay relationship. (Similarly, critics have noted Leyendecker’s skill and affinity for putting his subjects in borderline homoerotic stances, situations, and spaces.) In fact, Beach served as Leyendecker’s model for much of his career, including the famous Arrow Collar Man. In this way, a gay man found his likeness on doorsteps of homes across the country that might have felt funny letting in anyone they found too “queer.” As Collecters Weekly put it, “Before Rockwell, a Gay Artist Defined the Perfect American Male.”

5. His decline wasn’t pretty—or public

Leyendecker was a man of his time (in part because he helped mold it). Like the rest of the country, the ’20s were a highpoint that only made the ’30s all the more devastating. In the ’20s, he and Beach held galas for friends and, more importantly, key gatekeepers. Their home gradually became a beacon for celebrities and artists. But as the economy crashed, his commissions starkly decreased, and he had to pull back on a lot of the spending that had fueled his social extravagance. As the years rolled on, he regained work but never what he’d had before. When he passed away in 1954, he hadn’t been seen in public for some time at the behest of Beach, reportedly.

Leyendecker lived a long and complicated life, one that was hidden behind his very public creations. In this way, he mirrored the times even more than some biographers give him credit for. After all, if the Post’s covers captured what Americans aspired to, it was a reality quite distinct from the one they lived. What they found on the page didn’t represent what was happening off it. The same could be said for the man who drew their dreams.