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Harper's February

Date1896

Illustration CitationAdvertising poster for Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February 1896 Les Affiches Étrangères, p. 147

MediumCommercial lithograph

Dimensionscomposition: 18 5/16 × 9 13/16 in. (46.5 × 24.9 cm)
sheet: 19 5/8 × 10 13/16 in. (49.8 × 27.5 cm)

Credit LineGift of Walker Penfield, 1969

Object number1969-5

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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. His striking designs featured stylish men and women who belonged to or aspired to the magazine's upper class readership.

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..."

About his own work, Edward Penfield, "A poster has to ...come on with a personality of its own and to remain but a few moments. We are a little tired of the very serious nowadays, and a little frivolity is refreshing."

Although Penfield's advertising posters for Harper's account for less than a third of his thirty four year career, they became his most recognized and collected works.