Harold Rudolf Foster's life was an adventure only equaled by those of the characters he drew. "Hal" was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, August 16, 1892. At just eight years old, he captained a 12-foot raft (actually a plank) across Halifax Harbor. By ten he was skippering a 30-foot sloop in the Atlantic. Hal never became seasick. "It was the sea," he insisted, "that became Foster-sick." This attitude about life would drive him and would become the philosophical foundation for his greatest creation.
His artistic influences were E.A. Abbey, Howard Pyle , Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, James Montgomery Flagg, and N.C. Wyeth. In 1910, he became a staff artist with the Hudson Bay Company.
At twenty-eight Foster decided to seriously learn to be an artist. He took a job with the Jahn & Ollier Engraving Company and enrolled in evening classes at the Chicago Art Institute. He later supplemented this education with night classes at the National Academy of Design and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Eventually Foster went to work for the prestigious Palenske-Young Studio illustrating ads and magazine covers.
In 1927, Joseph H. Neebe, an associate of Foster's, went to Tarzana, California to meet with Edgar Rice Burroughs. Neebe needed an illustrator with the sensibilities of a fine artist; so he went to Harold Foster. The Tarzan comic strip, illustrated by 36-year-old Foster, was introduced to the American and Canadian audiences on January 7, 1929. In addition, 1929 heralded the first appearances of Popeye in Segar's Thimble Theatre, Clifford McBride's Napoleon, and in Belgium, Herge's (Georges Remi's) Tintin. Another Foster trademark that appeared for the first time in comics was the use of captions instead of word balloons. This technique, called a story-strip, allowed Foster to create compositions containing amazingly detailed backgrounds unhindered by text.
Foster began working on a character of his own, Derek, Son of Thane. King Features Syndicate's general manager, Joseph Connelly, would finally re-christen it Prince Valiant. The first episode of Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur appeared on February 13, 1937.
When he was 73, Foster was elected to membership in Great Britain's Royal Society of Arts - an honor very few Americans can claim. Hal Foster's work has inspired generations of artists. Even the great Disney artist, Carl Barks once said that he kept Foster's water scenes as reference because he was the only one who could get it right. Without intending to Foster created a bridge between the Golden Age of Illustration and the present.
(source: http://www.bpib.com/illustra2/foster.htm)