Penfield's poster advertises The Exiles and Other Stories by Richard Harding Davis, one of the most popular American writers of the 1890s. The image promotes a short story collection published by Harper & Brothers.

Historical context

Richard Harding Davis was a journalist, war correspondent, and fiction writer whose celebrity rivalled that of any American author in the 1890s. He was the model for the "Gibson Man" (the male counterpart of Charles Dana Gibson's "Gibson Girl"), and his dispatches from wars in Cuba, South Africa, and Europe made him a household name. His short stories appeared regularly in Harper's, where Penfield would have known him as a colleague.

Penfield's poster for Davis's collection is a piece of Harper's own cross-promotion: the magazine's art director advertising a book by the magazine's star contributor. This kind of internal synergy was typical of the Harper's publishing empire, which included the monthly magazine, a weekly newspaper, a book publishing house, and a stable of illustrators and writers who worked across all four divisions.

About Edward Penfield (1866–1925)

Often called the father of the American poster, Penfield served as art director of Harper's Magazine from 1890 to 1901, producing over 100 cover designs during that period. His style drew on Japanese woodblock printing and the French affiche tradition: flat areas of colour, bold outlines, and minimal detail. He became one of the most recognised illustrators of the American Art Nouveau movement, and his wartime posters remain some of the most widely studied examples of early 20th-century graphic propaganda.

This fine art reproduction is printed on museum-grade stock, faithful to the original's bold colours and graphic simplicity.