Domingo "Dominick" Francesco Mario Periconi was born on January 22, 1883 in the town of Reggio in the Calabria region of Italy. His father was John Periconi. His mother was Grace Yolanda Spinella. At the age of ten he immigrated to the U.S.A., arriving in New York City on March 3, 1893. He lived with relatives in an apartment building at 2164 Second Avenue, which is near 112th Street in the East Harlem district of Manhattan.
He attended public school and he studied art at the National Academy of Design in NYC.
He worked at an advertising company as a staff artist, and supplemented his income by painting portraits of society figures.
On April 21, 1908 he married Elizabeth Meade Millspaugh, a native New Yorker. They moved to their own larger apartment at 2036 Third Avenue, which is also near 112th Street in East Harlem. They had one son, Eugene Alexis Periconi, who was born in 1911.
By 1926 as business improved the family moved to their own home at 21 West Street in Mamaroneck, NY, which they bought for $15,000. Mamaroneck is close to New Rochelle, where most of the top illustrators lived and worked at the time, including J.C. Leyendecker, Coles Phillips, and Norman Rockwell.
By 1930, during the Great Depression, as the advertising market collapsed along with industry and banking, he began to work for the pulp magazine industry. He painted freelance pulp magazine covers for Ace-High Magazine, Cowboy Stories, Jungle Stories, and Wild West Weekly.
In 1936, as the economy improved, the family moved to Binghamton, NY, where he resumed his prosperous career painting portraits of society figures, as well as modest landscapes of Upstate New York.
Domingo Periconi died in Watkins Glen, NY, at the age of fifty-seven on June 7, 1940.
© David Saunders 2009 |
