Dec 19, 2007 - Sale 2133

Sale 2133 - Lot 156

Price Realized: $ 1,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
LOUIS J. RHEAD (1857-1926) L. PRANG & CO'S HOLIDAY PUBLICATIONS. 1895.
21 1/4x16 inches.
Condition A-: minor repaired tears at edges. Matted.
British-born Rhead studied painting in Paris as a boy and moved to the United States in the 1880s, where he became the art director at the New York publishing house of D. Appleton. On a subsequent trip to Paris in the early 1890s, he visited Eugene Grasset's exhibit at the Salon des Cent, where he also met the artist. "That he was a devotee of Grasset's style was apparent in his work, and although he has often been derided for his adherence to this model, Rhead is actually the only artist to attempt to transfer the pure French Art Nouveau style to the United States" (Miller p. 222). Gleeson White, writing in the Studio, August 1896, states that Rhead's posters "have tried to embody just as much of the spirit of Pre-Raphaelite art as the hoarding can bear." Rhead "believed that through the right kind of poster art the moral standards of the citizenry could be raised" (the American Poster p. 12). Louis Prang, a German immigrant, ran a large and important printing house in Boston. Despite being one of America's most influential printers of chromolithographs, he is most remembered as having invented the Christmas card. Kiehl 251, DFP I 460, Reims 1313, Virginia p. 43.