Baseball Glove Art Featuring King Kelly
Hall of Famer Michael “King” Kelly Portrayed on Vintage Glove
Michael "King" Kelly, one of the best & most popular players in late-1800s baseball, painted on a pair of custom-made 19th century-inspired gloves.
Kelly was also known as "$10,000 Kelly" for the big-time (at the time) price tag on his sale from Chicago to the Boston Beaneaters.
Back then, when gloves were becoming standard equipment, some players wore both the finger tip & fingerless glove (on their throwing hand). Having played every position(!), Kelly was mostly an outfielder and catcher, where two gloves certainly would have come in handy.
Wanting to capture a sense of the era and utilize equipment similar to that which was used in the 1880s, I reached out to my friend at Huntington Base Ball Co., who specializes in handcrafting historically-based equipment. The design for these handsome gloves come from studying 19c examples at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown: Veg tan leather with the tobacco-stained tips for a decidedly era-appropriate look.
Before applying paint: vintage-inspired baseball (or base ball, as it was back then) gloves by Huntington Base Ball Co.
I wanted to display both sides of the gloves in this painting in order to give a more complete view of these early, gardening-like work gloves for players.
My first “back of the napkin” ideas sketched in the planning stages while figuring out how best to tackle this painting.
King Kelly won two batting titles, 8 pennants with various teams and was a prolific base stealer. And he popularized the hit-and-run and the hook slide – base running which was subject of a hit song in the late 1880s, "Slide, Kelly, Slide".
Kelly was the author of the first baseball autobiography, “Play Ball: Stories of the Ball Field”, and he even performed on Vaudeville stages.
King Kelly work in progress.
The wonderfully decorative typefaces and lettering of late 19c influenced the design approach for the lettering on this artwork. And the flourishes and swirls became a key element in connecting the two sides of the painting.
A thumb in the eye…or pretty near to it to give a sense of scale of the portrait.
For Kelly’s portrait, I wanted to recall the early portrait studio style of baseball player photos, sepia tones and greys. As usual, especially with very old photo reference, this portrait likeness was a combination of several images to get the detail I wanted for his face, uniform, bat and hands. Like most projects, this one was heavy on the research before even picking up a brush – Incredibly interesting to learn a bit more about the 19th century game and one of its stars.
Kelly was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945.
Acrylic painting and hand-lettering design on a pair of Huntington Base Ball Co. 1880s-style baseball gloves (but made in 2020!).
This painting was commissioned by a collector and is sold. If you have an idea for a project you’d like to see me take a swing at, just get in touch.
Artist Sean Kane
Sean Kane's baseball glove art is in the collection of the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and was part of the "Chasing Dreams" exhibit at the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art. Sean was recognized as “Artist of the Month” by the National Art Museum of Sport. His work has been commissioned by the Philadelphia Phillies, Cal Ripken Sr Foundation and The Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. More about Sean
