The poster at the turn of the century

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 1994 by Frederick R. Brandt

The short-lived but overwhelming proliferation of posters, magazines, and books in America during the 1890's coincided with the increase in literacy and leisure time, the desire for adult education, and innovations in technology. Poster clubs, magazines dedicated to collecting posters, poster exhibitions, and even living poster shows(1) made posters a matter of intense discussion. Some criticized the poster as the poor relative of what were considered the higher art forms of painting and sculpture. In its defense, however, the artist Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866-1946), claiming that there were some six thousand collectors of posters in the United States, wrote in the first issue of the magazine the Poster,

The people who still scoff at posters and poster collecting should bear in mind that the great periods of art were those in which it allied itself most intimately with the daily life of the people, and that in this craze for posters, "the poor man's picture gallery," as they called it, is seen almost the first sign of a renaissance in which the spirit of the century, which is so largely a commercial one, will find an utterance in beauty instead of ugliness.(2)

In the same vein the poster critic Roger Cunningham wrote in his magazine Poster Lore that the poster

has come to light as one of the encouraging signs of a popular knowledge and appreciation of art, and as an earnest of art taking its proper place in the decoration of the useful--of art as the teacher of the beautiful by symbols....The fact is, that to reach the people, art must step out of the picture gallery, out of the museum, out of the school-room, out of the boudoir, and go into the streets.(3)

And into the streets the poster went, primarily to advertise magazines and books. Edward Penfield (1866-1925), the art editor of Harper's, produced his first poster in the new bold, simplified, straightforward style for that magazine in 1893. The first issue of the Chap-Book was heralded in May 1894 with a poster by Will H. Bradley.(4) Nine years later in a survey of what were known as the little magazines, Frederick Winthrop Faxon commented,

The small, artistically printed periodicals variously called Chap-Books, Ephemerals, Bibelots, Brownie Magazines, Fadazines, Magazettes, Freak Magazines, owe their origin probably to the success of the Chap-Book a little semi-monthly magazine.(5)

During this brief but brilliant period there was often a dose relationship between the poster, its designer, and the cover of the magazine or book that was being advertised. Penfield, for example, was one of the first to include the cover of Harper's in the design of posters advertising the magazine, although he did not design the rather conservative covers of the early issues of the periodical.

Such journals as Poster Lore and the Poster logically reproduced the latest posters as their covers, often with a commentary about the poster or its creator inside. The covers of the Red Letter (the successor to the Poster) were designed by Elisha Brown Bird, the magazine's art director. The magazine's first issue advertised "A copy of the first Red Letter poster, 'In the Library,' by E. B. Bird will be sent, postpaid, to those remitting the amount of subscription, $1.00. Single copies of the poster, 25 cts."(6) The second issue advertised that Bird's cover design had been reproduced in a limited edition of fifty copies "on large size Japan Vellum, each copy being numbered and signed by Mr. Bird, and of this edition forty are herewith offered for sale at one dollar each."(7)

In book publishing one finds a closer connection between the poster designer and the cover designer than in the world of the little magazines. An example is Maurice Brazil Prendergast, who designed both posters and book covers for Joseph Knight Company, Publishers, in Boston. The examples shown in Plates IV and V are nearly identical and show Prendergast's awareness of Japanese design.

The magnificent poster shown in Plate VII was chosen as the signature image of the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and was reproduced in many of the sixty-seven pamphlets and other printed items issued by the exposition's publicity bureau.(8) The poster depicts the "Maid of the Mist," the spirit of Niagara Falls, and was printed in nine colors in an edition of 120,926 copies.(9)

Some publishers chose different artists to design the poster and the cover of the book it advertised. This was the case for Richard Le Gallienne's Quest of the Golden Girl, for which Bradley designed the cover and Ethel Reed made the poster. The talented Reed produced some of the most dynamic, graphically beautiful posters and book illustrations of the period. Bradley's splendid cover of repeated profiles is typical of this master's over-all designs."

In 1895 Reed designed both the poster and the cover for Bliss Carrman's Behind the Arras: A Book of the Unseen.(10) In this case the cover is an over-all pattern of flowers related to those that appear behind the head of the woman depicted on the poster. For Mabel Fuller Blodgett's Fairy Tales, Reed's poster also differs from the book cover she created. In this case she also did the illustrations in the book. In many of her posters and book covers Reed used the image of one or more precocious young girls, possibly based on self-portraits. Often surrounded by flowers, the figures are imbued with a combination of innocence and art nouveau decadence.