|In the sweet uses of advertisement the American is surely an expert,
and it would have been curious indeed, if he had overlooked so obvious
and so effective a method of advertising as the pictorial poster.
Finding, in the notorious phrase of Mr. Whistler, that "Art was on
the town," the American advertiser was one of the most eager of those
passing gallants who chucked her under the chin. Who it was originated
the artistic poster movement in the States, it were hard to say with
certainty: it may have been Mr. Matt. Morgan. Among recent American
poster producers, three, however, are most conspicuous, Mr. Edward
Penfield, Mr. Louis J. Rhead, and Mr. Will. H. Bradley. It is probable
that the first-named was the innovator: at least, one would be tempted
to judge so from the quantity of his designs.
Mr. Penfield is still young, having been born at Brooklyn in the year
1866, so that if he was the first American artist to deal with the
poster, the movement in that continent is obviously a recent one.
Most of his posters are on a small scale, and partake of the nature
of window-bills rather than of placards especially destined to the
hoarding. At the same time, Mr. Penfield has been by no means slow to
appreciate that it is the first
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business of an advertisement to advertise, and his appreciation of this
fad, coupled with a very dainty fancy and no small technical skill, has
led to results which are of unquestionable importance. With his earliest
efforts I cannot pretend to be well acquainted. In 1893 he produced
for a firm at Salem a large bill which measures eighty-one by forty-two
inches. The subject is a girl in a black dress and yellow jacket who is
laden with packages. For the publications of the firm of Harpers,
Mr. Penfield has done quite a quantity of excellent and artistic
advertisements. Amongst the most effective is one produced for a special
midsummer number of "Harper's Bazar," representing a girl playing
a banjo, divided by a crimson sun from an attentive listener of the
opposite sex. Again, for the issue of July, 1894, the artist gives us
a girl in white lighting red crackers arranged to spell the name of the
month. For the February number of the following year, we are presented,
most appropriately, with a gentleman posting a valentine in an orange
coloured letter-box. In April of the same year, Mr. Penfield gives us
Joan of Arc in yellow, wielding sword and staff. Amongst the numerous
books which Mr. Penfield has advertised may be mentioned "The Cloister
and the Hearth," "Pastime Stories," "Our English Cousins," and
"Perlycross." This artist's work is always ingeniously conceived, and
the colour schemes are not seldom pleasantly audacious. Mr. Penfield
gives us very agreeable versions of the American girl in general, and of
the "summer girl" in particular. His maidens are adorably conscious of
their power to charm, and are fully alive to the fact that their gowns
are of the smartest.
To turn from Mr. Penfield to Mr. Louis J. Rhead is to turn to an artist
settled in the United States, but English by birth and education. Mr.
Rhead was born at Etruria, that unclassical place with the classical
name, and comes of a family of artists. He was, I believe, a student at
South
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Kensington for several years, and only reached America in 1883. He has
exhibited at the
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Salon and the Academy and other important picture shows.
Mr. Rhead seems to have taken to the poster with the greatest
enthusiasm, and he has undoubtedly produced a series of curious and
striking designs. By far the most important of his efforts, though not
the largest, are the designs which he has done for the New York "Sun."
In one of these very daring productions, a crimson sun glows in a golden
sky. The ground is green, the footpath and the trees are blue, while the
girl's costume is garnet and red. It must be confessed that this
colour scheme sounds somewhat formidable, but Mr. Rhead has invented an
arrangement at once artistic and compelling. The lettering, it must be
noted with regret, is not from his own hand. One of the largest of Mr.
Rhead's posters is the "Pearline," in which a girl in a green and red
dress is represented in the act of pinning a sheet on to a line. This
design measures forty-one by twenty-eight inches. Of considerable
size, and of no small merit, is the poster executed for the "Century,"
Christmas, 1894, the chief feature of which is a girl with a peacock.
Among other effective designs which stand to the credit of Mr. Rhead
may be mentioned those advertising "Harper's Bazar," Christmas, 1890,
Thanksgiving, 1894, and Christmas of the same year. For the "Century,"
besides that already noticed, he has done several interesting posters,
and he helped to advertise various numbers of "St. Nicholas" last year.
It is to be noted that
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Mr. Louis Rhead has held an exhibition of his posters, the catalogue of
which, by reason of its very characteristic and personal decorations, is
highly esteemed by collectors of those unconsidered trifles which end in
becoming especially dear to the connoisseur.
Among the magazines of the world, the "Chap Book," which emanates from
Chicago, is by no means the least interesting. Fascinating as is the
title, the contents of this little periodical are still more so; its
editors seem to have eschewed banality, and to have gone in for novelty,
even when the new did not possess an extraordinary degree of merit. It
were meet that so original a publication should have an advertiser of
corresponding eccentricity. In Mr. Will. H. Bradley, the proprietors of
the "Chap Book" undoubtedly possess such an one. Born at Springfield,
Massachusetts, Mr. Bradley lives in Chicago, and to that town and its
publications he has mainly devoted his energies as an artist advertiser.
It will hardly be disputed that he has seen and assimilated, in no small
degree, the manner of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. He is, however, a great deal
more than a mere imitator; what he has borrowed, he has borrowed with
conspicuous intelligence, and nobody could for a moment accuse him of
anything approaching petty larceny. Among his most important posters
is a colossal one which, in the manner of Mr. Beardsley, proclaims
the attractions of the drama by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, entitled "The
Masqueraders." In 1894 Mr. Bradley advertised the "Chap Book" by means
of two dancers in red and brown costumes; the following year he insisted
on the same publication by means of a girl in white and a man in black;
and yet again, through the medium of a young lady in blue, mixed up with
trees in intense purple, outlined with red and white; and several other
equally effective compositions.
Mr. Bradley is, however, not the only artist intimately connected with
Chicago who has distinguished himself in the production of posters. A
native of that city, Mr. Will. Carqueville, has done very interesting
work for the firm of Lippincott's. In the year 1894, at least one design
by him was commissioned, and in the succeeding year he produced four or
more. That he is not afraid of colour is proved by the fact that in
the poster done for Lippincott's, March, 1895, he combines dark purple,
yellow, blue, and bronze. In another design we meet with red, purple,
yellow, and blue. Mr. Kenyon Cox is an American artist whose fame is by
no means confined to the United States. A pupil of Gerome and Carolus
Duran, he has, so far as I know, made only one essay in the art of the
poster. This measures eighty-one by forty inches, and is in black
and white. It represents a male figure carrying a torch, and is an
advertisement for "Scribner's Magazine." Mr. Scotson Clark was a
schoolfellow of Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. He has, among other posters, done
two to which the picturesque labels of "Our Lady of the Peacock
Feather," and "Lady of the Iris," are attached. In addition, for the
March issue of the "Bookman," 1895, Mr. Scotson Clark drew a monk, with
book in hand. Mr. George Wharton Edwards, the well-known painter in
water-colours, must be credited with three designs for the "Century," in
the months of February, March, and April, 1895. Moreover, by means of a
drawing of a girl and a peacock, he proclaimed the twenty-eighth
annual exhibition of the American Water-Colour Society, in addition to
designing a bill for a book entitled "The Man Who Married the Moon."
The advertising enterprise of the firm of Scribner has made
poster-collectors the richer by one or two productions by Mr. Charles
Gibson Dana. He it was who announced, with no inconsiderable skill, the
issues of "Scribner's Magazine" for the months of January and February,
1895. Mr. Archie Gunn is the son of a well-known drawing master in one
of the large towns of the Midlands. Leaving England for America, he
found an outlet for his talent as a draughtsman on the New York journal
"Truth." His work is nearly always vivacious, even where it is not
particularly original. His posters were done for the "Illustrated
American," and are by no means bad examples of his craftsmanship. Like
most prominent American artists, Mr. Thomas Burford Meteyard studied in
Paris. His poster to advertise a book called
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"Songs from Vagabondia" is in black and white, and consists of portraits
of the artist himself and the authors of the book, Mr. Bliss Carman and
Mr. Richard Hovey. A limited number of copies were printed "sur Japon,"
and these, I believe, are rare. As in the case of so many other American
artists, Mr. Francis Day's poster work was done for the most part for
the great illustrated magazines which do such credit to the United
States, as an art-producing nation. Mr. Day's design for "St. Nicholas,"
Christmas, 1894, seems to me altogether agreeable, while in the series
designed for "Scribner's Magazine," more than one interesting thing will
be found.
In dealing with the poster in England, we have noticed the fact that one
woman, Mrs. Dearmer, has succeeded in producing a bill at once artistic
and effective. Miss Ethel Reed would seem to be the most conspicuous
lady-artist who has taken up the designing of artistic posters in
the States. Her efforts date only from last February, when she did
an advertisement for the "Boston Sunday Herald." Since then she has
produced several designs which are held in considerable esteem by
American collectors. Amongst other artists who have taken part in the
poster movement on the other side of the Atlantic are the following:
Messrs. Alder ("New York World," March 17th, 1895), Allen, Palmer Cox
("New Brownie Book"), C. Miles Gardner ("Boston Sunday Herald," February
10th, 1895, and March 10th, 1895), Oliver Herford, Charles M. Howard
("Boston Sunday Herald," April 21st, 1895), Frank King ("New York
World," April 7th, 1895), H. McCarter (the Green Tree Library), Moores
("St. Nicholas," November, 1894), Julius A. Schweinfurth (Boston
Festival Orchestra, 1895), W. Granville Smith ("Scribner's Magazine,"
Christmas, 1894), W. L. Taylor, Abby E. Underwood, R. Wills Irving, C.
H. Woodbury, Charles Hubbard Wright, and William M. Paxton. The last
named has been chiefly associated with the "Boston Sunday Herald," and
for that journal he has produced several posters of distinction.
My review of the artistic poster movement in America has been of
necessity brief, and cannot, therefore, be free from sins of omission.
In writing it, I have, where my own knowledge has seemed to me
insufficient, made use of the descriptive catalogue of the collection
of American posters published last May by Mr. Charles Knowles Bolton,
of Brookline, Massachusetts. From the useful bibliography printed at the
end of this pamphlet, it would seem that the movement has been watched
from the first by the American press with keen interest. So far back
as the year 1892, we find Mr. Brander Matthews discussing the pictorial
poster in the "Century" magazine. In the
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present year the subject has been dealt with by writers in such
important newspapers as the "New York Tribune" and the "Boston Herald,"
to say nothing of such journals as "Scribner's Magazine," the "Critic,"
the "Art Interchange," and the "Art Amateur." Quite recently the English
public have had opportunities of seeing the best work by French and
native artists. It is to be hoped that at the next poster exhibition
they will be afforded a chance of seeing what excellent work American
designers are doing in this very practical branch of applied art.
A poster by Mr. E. A. Abbey, illustrated on page 315, arrived too late
for consideration in its proper place. It is entirely worthy the great
reputation of the artist who has so kindly permitted us to reproduce
it here. The figure is in red scale armour, bearing a shield with a red
cross.
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