His posters and magazine covers might seem pretty tame today, but they were striking when they first rolled off the presses. His basic style was cloisonniste, using dark outlines with areas filled in using flat colors. However, Penfield's outlines tended to be on the thin side, so the impression generated was more like a conventional illustration than something with a more designed look that thick outlines might have yielded.
That's a semi-enclosed beach chair next to the girl, with beach houses and a boardwalk in the background. Harper's was and is a magazine, and Penfield was one of its art directors for about ten years during the 1890s and designed and illustrated many of its publicity posters.
Just in time for the start of baseball season.
Pierce-Arrow was an American luxury automobile maker whose fortunes steadily declined after the Great War of 1914-18. Here, it was in its heyday.
Similar posters were done for some other Ivy schools. In all cases, we view huge bodies and comparatively tiny heads.
This seems to be in reaction to the start of the Great War in August of 1914, even though the USA was not yet at war.
The caption on the Web where I found this indicated that it was for Collier's, but I can't yet verify that. Again, the heads are a bit too small.
This is interesting because here Penfield did not use his usual flat, poster style of illustration.
No comments:
Post a Comment