McClure's The Story of Rockefeller

McClure's The Story of Rockefeller
McClure's The Story of Rockefeller

McClure's The Story of Rockefeller

Date1903
Artist (American illustrator, 1865–1923)
Illustration CitationAdvertising poster for The Story of Rockefeller, by Ida M. Tarbell, in McClure's, December 1903. From a life sketch made by the artist in Cleveland, October 11, 1903.
MediumSingle-color commercial lithograph
Dimensionssheet: 17 × 10 15/16 in. (43.2 × 27.8 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1977
Object number1977-105
On View
Not on view
ClassificationsPRINT
Label TextMcClure's fostered a new generation of investigative journalists, later dubbed "muckrakers" by President Theodore Roosevelt. They waged a campaign to expose corruption in business and political lawlessness. Ida Tarbell wrote a series of articles focusing on John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil to illustrate these inflammatory issues. Her stories on Standard Oil began in the November 1902 McClure's and lasted for nineteen issues.

Poster artist George Edmund Varian captured Rockefellier's miserly appearance, reflecting Tarbell's description: “Under his silk skull-cap he seems like an old monk of the Inquisition such as one sees in the Spanish picture galleries”
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