HENRY PATRICK RALEIGH (1880-1944) SUNSET MAGAZINE / FEBRUARY. 1902.
25x19 inches, 63 1/2x48 1/4 cm.
Condition B+: minor tears at lower left and bottom edges; creases in margins and along horizontal fold; darkened and toned overall. Hinged to mat at top edge. Paper.
Born on the West Coast, Raleigh attended San Francisco's Hopkins Academy art school (the San Francisco Art Institute) and began his professional life as an illustrator for the local San Francisco Bulletin newspaper. His work got him noticed by William Randolph Hearst, who hired him and moved him to New York, where he began illustrating for The Journal. During World War I, he designed many posters for the American war effort, and after the war, began to make his mark as one of the premiere illustrators of his time. His work appeared in countless magazines, and for 19 years his illustrations advertising Maxwell House coffee were known to millions of Americans. He was considered one of the great American illustrators of his era. When the Society of Illustrators held a show of his work in 2013, they called it "Henry Patrick Raleigh: A Giant from the Era of the Golden Age of Illustration." His early work for Sunset magazine is not often mentioned in his professional resume, and the posters he designed for them are rare, and many, such as this one, are previously unrecorded.