Harpers Bazaar February 1898 cover poster – Edward Penfield

Harpers Bazaar February 1898 cover poster – Edward Penfield This vintage Harper’s February poster was created for Harpers Weekly. The American magazine was set up by four brothers, James, John, Wesley and Fletcher Harper in New York City and was first published in 1850. Influenced by the successful English magazine, the London Illustrated News, Harpers Weekly was a political magazine that in addition to foreign and domestic news, included fiction, social issues, political essays and cartoons, all often supported by the use of quality illustrations. In just seven years the magazine’s circulation had risen to 200,000. During the Civil War period, 1861-1865, Harper’s Weekly was the most widely read journal in the United States. One of the reasons the magazine was so successful was that it utilised the talents of excellent writers and cartoonists. During its most influential period, it was the forum of political cartoonist Thomas Nast for over twenty years. The magazine developed a reputation for using some of the best illustrators of the time, including Winslow Homer, Granville Perkins, Porte Crayon, and Livingston Hopkins and publishing stories by writers including Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and William Makepeace Thackeray. Edward Penfield joined Harpers as a staff artist and editor in 1891. He was twenty-five years old. It wasn’t long after his promotion to  artistic director that Penfield produced his first piece of work for the magazine. It was a lithographic poster designed to advertise the now extremely popular magazine. There is some debate as to whether the first Penfield poster was the Harpers for March or Harpers for April 1893 editions. The March edition is cited as Penfield’s first for the magazine. It is a black and white rendering of a woman being swept away by the March winds. She is depicted carrying a copy of Harpers Weekly. Whether Penfield wasn’t satisfied with the poster or had simply forgotten about it, Penfield himself told a newspaper editor, in 1895, that the April edition was the first poster he had produced for the magazine. The April 1893 poster, Penfield described as an experiment, features a man in a green coat reading the Harper’s publication in the rain. Penfield’s first poster was a runaway success, well received by the public and critics alike. Penfield went on to produce a poster for every issue of the magazine for the next seven years. Magazine readers and poster collectors celebrated his designs for their boldness, abstraction, and occasional sense of humor. Penfield’s use of simple shapes and a limited palette of colors lent themselves to the early methods of reproduction of the era. His posters often portray wealthy, middle-class Americans in their pursuit of happiness through the relatively new social idea of filling ‘leisure time’. This Harper’s Monthly cover from 1898 is no exception. In the three-colour Harpers February poster, Penfield offers an image of a rather serious, even stern-looking man seated on a stool, engrossed in Harpers. He is sitting in front of a fireplace with a rather large black and white cat for company. Penfield’s posters were bold and stood out from a distance. Edward Penfield influenced American poster design in the same way artists like Théophile Steinlen, Alfonse Mucha, Jules Chéret, Leonetto Cappiello and Toulouse Lautrec influenced poster design in Europe. Harper’s Weekly published its final issue on May 13, 1916. It was absorbed by The Independent, which in turn merged with The Outlook in 1928. In the mid-1970s Harper’s Magazine revived the Harpers Weekly name which was published biweekly for most of its run. Harper’s magazine is the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the United States as well as being the oldest general interest monthly magazine in America. It still covers many diverse topics such as literature, politics, culture, finance and the arts, in a manner the magazine describes as, exploring the issues that drive our national conversation, through long-form narrative. Harper’s Magazine has won 22 National Magazine Awards. Edward Penfield cat posters Edward Penfield was a renowned American illustrator and poster designer, most famous for his work with Harper’s Bazaar magazine. In 1895 he provided the magazine with a series of highly acclaimed posters that illustrations that were instantly recognisable and popular. With a talent for conveying emotion Penfield was responsible for breathing new life into Harper’s Bazaar magazine and making it an iconic source of style advice and fashion trends. His artwork set the standard for commercial art in the United States at the turn-of-the-century, inspiring other illustrators across mediums while propelling the magazine to fame. Decades later, his influence can still be seen in modern art, design trends, and advertising campaigns. We currently offer several Edward Penfield posters on this website and we are adding new ones all the while. If there’s a particular Penfield image you are looking for please let us know and we’ll do our best to source it. Like Theodrore Steinlen, Penfield was a lover of cats and introduced them in to many of his illustrations. Here we highlight just three. The first is his cover for the February edition of Harpers Bazaar that sees a gentleman reading a book with his black and white cat at his side. His cover illustration for the Christmas 1894 edition features a woman sitting on a red chaise-longe reading the Harpers magazine. The poster Penfield created for the May 1896 issue features an elegantly dressed woman carrying a cat under each arm.