Dec 10, 2019 - Sale 2526

Sale 2526 - Lot 147

Price Realized: $ 13,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
ANDREW LOOMIS.
"These are my jewels." Calendar illustration for The Thomas D. Murphy Co., Red Oak, Iowa, 1941. Oil on canvas. 904x708 mm; 37x30 3/4 inches. Signed in lower left image. In a large, elaborate 49x43-inch metallic wood frame with and artist's name plate. Some horizontal craquelure along stretcher bars. Accompanied by a copy of the calendar mounted on original advertising panel as issued. 37x16 inches.

Additional Details

The Thomas D. Murphy Company of Red Oak, Iowa, billed itself as "The Birthplace of American Art Calendars." For over a hundred years, they produced calendars, direct mail, greeting cards, and novelties for numerous American companies. Murphy commissioned paintings (and bought the reproduction rights) from top artists and illustrators of the day including Loomis, Thomas Moran and Elbert Hubbard who once said that "Not a house, a home, a hotel, a store, a factory, a banking house or an office in all America but has a Red Oak calendar"--Murphy, Helen. "Murphy, Thomas Dowler" The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa. University of Iowa Press, 2009.