Slayton Underhill and the Hat

I know nothing about this illustrator but greatly admire his life's work which was devoted to the depiction of the hat atop the eligible male.
 top left, a typical Underhill cavalcade of hats on chaps.

top right Douglas Firbanks Jr., promoting the Stetson Park ($16.50) and incidentally his film The O'Hara October 1948, 23 x 24cms
 
 
bottom row Bing Crosby, promoting the Turf Club ($12.50) and incidentally his film The Emperor Waltz September 1948 23 x 24cms
 
 
but he also can be spotted elsewhere....
here in a Gulfpride advert of October 1946
 
There is a quality of stoniness in imagemaking that confounds the florid advocator of painterliness. Much of this quality can be found in American commercial art of the 1950's - a wilful deadness of surface, a heaviness of gesture and a marvellous concentration on the ordinary - even mundane.See Rene Magritte for heady exercises in this direction. Slayton Underhill regularly hones a marvellous talcum surface for beaming males under snappy brims.

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