?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
CLARENCE COLES PHILLIPS (1880-1927) LIGHT CONSUMES COAL. Circa 1918. 27 3/4x20 1/2 inches, 68 1/2x52 cm. Edwards & Deutsch Litho Co., Chicago. Condition B+: repaired tears and creases in margins and image; restored losses and restoration in top right and bottom left corners; wrinkles at edges. In what is perhaps the most "artistic" of the American World War I posters, Phillips unites the bold, direct elements of German object posters by artists such as Lucien Bernhard with the intricate swirls and patterns of American Art Nouveau in the style of William Bradley. Walton Rawls writes in Wake Up America that with the exception of Phillips, "in the work of the majority of American artists who contributed posters to the war effort, there is little evidence of direct inspiration from European precedents" (p. 20). Interestingly, while it may echo the work of European artists (Rawls points specifically to a 1907 image by Peter Behrens featuring a light bulb) the poster represents a drastic divergence from Phillips's, usual style. He was nationally known for his "fadeaway girls," which graced the covers of Life magazine from 1908 onward. In these images, which stylistically seemed to borrow from both the Beggarstaff Brothers and Ludwig Hohlwein, Phillips featured attractive young women whose clothing was the same color as the background so that viewers needed to complete the image in their imagination. Rawls p. 20, Modern American 28, Darracott p. 36.
