?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
VERNON MORSE (1898-1965) HUNTINGTON LAKE AND THE HIGH SIERRA / SOUTHERN PACIFIC. 1923. 23x16 inches, 58 1/2x40 1/2 cm. Condition A-: repaired tear at top edge, slightly into text; expertly-repaired tears, restored losses and minor creases at edges. Paper. Vernon Morse, born in Michigan, settled in California where he studied at the California School of Fine arts. Predominantly known for his landscape paintings of California and printmaking, Morse also designed a cover illustration for a Christmas issue of Radio magazine in 1924. His only recorded poster, this image for Southern Pacific is an idyllic scene of two horseback riders with a simplified Huntington Lake and the Sierra Nevadas in the background. With the lodge nestled into the scenery and the female figure literally beckoning to the viewer, the poster presents an inviting image to attract tourists to the man-made lake in Fresno County. Morse's prowess in woodblock technique is especially apparent in his treatment of the horse, figure and towering tree. The bold use of a flat yellow plane to emphasize the warmth of the sky is a motif also used by Maurice Logan in his Southern Pacific posters for Great Salt Lake (1928) and Yosemite (1923). Northern California pl. 8.
