Harper's, November
Date1898
Artist
Edward Penfield
(American painter, illustrator, 1866–1925)
Illustration CitationAdvertising poster for Harper's New Monthly Magazine, November 1898
MediumCommercial lithograph
Dimensionscomposition: 11 1/8 × 18 3/16 in. (28.3 × 46.2 cm)
sheet: 11 1/2 × 18 9/16 in. (29.2 × 47.1 cm)
sheet: 11 1/2 × 18 9/16 in. (29.2 × 47.1 cm)
Credit LineGift of Mrs. J. Marshall Cole, 1976
Object number1976-30
On View
Not on viewClassificationsPRINT
Label TextAs art director for Harper and Brothers in the 1890s, Edward Penfield designed a series of posters to advertise Harper’s flagship monthly magazine, creating a unified marketing campaign in a recognizable style. Here a coachman with a rather impatient expression waits with his glossy black horse as an older woman and (perhaps?) her granddaughter, who holds an issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine, take a moment to get aboard. Penfield's use of black, gray, and an autumnal yellow give the poster a somewhat austere look appropriate for the season, a mood reenforced by the coachman's collar turned up agaainst the cold.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..."
