Merry Xmas 1921 - Edward Penfield

Penfield's Merry Xmas 1921 is a late-career Christmas design, produced just four years before his death. By this point Penfield had been working as a commercial illustrator for over three decades, and his style had evolved from the pure Art Nouveau of his 1890s work toward a slightly looser, more relaxed approach.

Historical context

By 1921, the poster craze of the 1890s was long over, and commercial illustration had moved toward photographic reproduction and more detailed, painterly styles. Penfield's flat-colour, outline-driven approach was no longer at the cutting edge, but it retained a warmth and clarity that made it well suited to greeting cards and seasonal designs. His late Christmas work has a gentler quality than his younger, sharper commercial posters, reflecting both his maturity as an artist and the more intimate, personal context of a holiday greeting versus a newsstand advertisement.

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.