[FOR 100 YEARS . . . MAIN LINE OF MID - AMERICA / ILLINOIS CENTRAL]. Gouache painting. 1951.
15 1/2x23 1/2 inches, 39 1/2x59 3/4 cm. Condition A-: minor abrasions and scratches to image; gouache on watercolor board, with some tape on verso. Hand-signed by the artist in ink over pencil.
Bern Hill was a graphic designer and painter. He "worked for the Kudner Agency, a New York City advertising firm. At the end of 1949, General Motors' Electro-Motive Division embarked on a rather radical advertising campaign which included vertical format streamline style paintings for the covers of Railway Age" (Vintage Rails, January / February 1998, p. 64). Between 1950 and 1956, Hill painted 65 paintings. "Electro-Motive also produced a series of very high-grade posters of Hill's paintings that were overwritten by the marketing theme for that particular railroad . . . it is unknown if all 65 paintings were turned into posters . . . Hill's assignment was to portray the 'feel' of each railroad in a scene that often captured the landscape of the individual road and gave the viewer the sense of that road's missions - freight, passenger or switching" (Railroad Heritage, No. 6, 2002, p. 10). The Illinois Central Railroad connected Chicago in the North with New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama in the South and with Omaha to the West. Hill's details were as accurate with landmarks along the line as they were with the engines themselves. The truss bridge depicted here is the Cairo Bridge, which spans the Ohio River between Illinois and Kentucky.
![BERN HILL (1911-1977). [FOR 100 YEARS . . . MAIN LINE OF MID - AMERICA / ILLINOIS CENTRAL]. Gouache painting. 1951. 15½x23½ inches, 39](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//783\807783.jpg)
