LOUIS J. RHEAD (1858-1926) FOR FASHIONABLE WINTER CLOTHING. Circa 1896. 46 3/4x28 1/4 inches. Ellery Howard Co., NY. Condition B+: repaired tears in margins and image; minor restoration along vertical and horizontal folds. This is a rare and unusual work for Rhead, who primarily designed posters for publications. It appears to be a stock poster onto which the name of a specific retailer would have been added in the blank space at the bottom. No stranger to winter scenes, Rhead had used several winter landscapes as the settings for his posters for The Sun and The Century; however, they all depicted women. This is one of his very few posters to depict a man. The image appears as a color plate in "Das Moderne Plakat," (1897) and Kiehl illustrates a variation that announces a short story called "His Lordship," with the blank space at the bottom being used to fill in the name of the newspaper where the story was being serialized. DFP I 458, Kiehl 264 (var).
