Tag Archives: painting

It’s got a cat on it.

Cover for The Countryside Magazine and Suburban Life, April 1917 - art by Paul Bransom
Cover for The Countryside Magazine and Suburban Life, April 1917 – art by Paul Bransom

Along with ads of yore, I also love a good magazine cover.

From my collection, here’s The Countryside Magazine and Suburban Life’s cover for April 1917 (Spring Planting Number) with art by Paul Bransom.

The New York Times has a rather fine obituary/biography of the “Dean of American Animal Artists” here.

Don’t Come Around Here No More

Maxfield Parrish must have been a masochist, because this is a painting of his. He CHOSE to paint this insane checkered pattern. I wonder if he ever tried plaid?

Maxfield Parrish Painted for Life
Painted For Life by Maxfield Parrish — October 19, 1922 Life humor magazine cover — from my collection

The thresher of the period and a mystery for the ages.

I stayed out of the bidding on a few auction items I wanted, but eventually managed to land this sweet Aultman & Taylor thresher advertising poster as my 2nd and last North Star auction win of the day. It has a pretty savage old-timey insult on their competition I liked, calling them “superior to the flail and an improvement on the devices of ancient Egypt.” It wasn’t until I got it home that I saw a label on the back from the Art Conservation Resource Center — Somebody paid to have this poster restored and preserved back in 1988. Interesting. Further digging found a similar but not exact version of this poster selling for $1,300, and another similar poster with an auction estimate range of $3,000-$6,000. A third one sold in 2012 for $950. The ones I found online have a big “The Aultman-Taylor Thresher and Mounted Horse Power for sale by” underneath the illustration, and mine has a tiny “Chas. Shober & Co., Prop’s Chicago Lith’g Co.” down there. No year listed online or anywhere on the print, and I’m not sure if a restored piece is worth more or less or why mine is different from the ones I found online, but this is still all kinds of neat. Hooray for auctions!

(And if any of you have any clue as to the approximate year this was made, please share!)

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