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Harper's October

Date1895

Illustration CitationAdvertisement for Harper's New Monthly Magazine, October 1895

MediumCommercial lithograph

Dimensionscomposition: 17 1/16 × 12 3/4 in. (43.3 × 32.4 cm)
sheet: 17 3/4 × 13 5/8 in. (45.1 × 34.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of Walker Penfield, 1969

Object number1969-19

On View

Not on view

Label TextAs art director for Harper and Brothers, Edward Penfield designed a series of posters to advertise Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, creating a unified marketing campaign in a signature style. The posters feature large areas of flat color and depict one or more figures in some sporting or leisure activity, often reading or carrying an issue of the magazine. The subjects usually reflect the upper class status of the magazine's readers.

Penfield's posters were popular during the so-called Poster Craze of the 1890s. One critic remarked on the high quality of such works in 1899: "Book and magazine covers, lettering, theatrical bills, advertisements, in fact anything with which the poster could have the slightest affiliation has profited materially. In fact, we are...at this time accustomed to good, strong decorative work in advertising of all sorts..."

The typeface for the September poster is Bamboo, meant to suggest the Japanese artistic influence popular in America at the turn of the twentieth century.