Louis Rhead - Prang's easter publications, Art Nouveau Poster

Prior to the introduction of lithography, primary poster printing techniques included the Wood Block technique and the Intaglio technique. Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Germany in 1796, but not utilized until the mid-to-late 1800s until the introduction of “Cheret’s three stone lithographic process.” Three stones were used to create vibrant posters with intense color and texture. The stones used were typically red, yellow or blue, which enabled the artist to produce a poster featuring both graphics and text using any color of the rainbow. The main challenge was to keep the images aligned. This method lent itself to images consisting of large areas of flat color and resulted in the characteristic poster designs of this period. The first “Art Nouveau” poster was made by Chezch artist Alphonse Mucha who worked in Paris. Art Nouveau and Belle Epoque dominated Paris until about 1901. In 1898, a new artist took Paris by storm, who would later be donned the father of modern advertising – Leonetto Cappiello.

Louis' father was a highly respected gilder and ceramic artist. In the 1870s, George Rhead taught art and design in Staffordshire schools and founded Fenton School of Art. Louis and all his siblings attended their father's art classes and worked in the potteries as children. Because Louis demonstrated exceptional talent, when he was thirteen in 1872, his father sent him to study in Paris, France with artist Gustave Boulanger. In 1879 he gained a scholarship at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, London. In 1883 at the age of twenty-four, Louis Rhead was offered and accepted a position as Art Director for the U.S. publishing firm of D. Appleton in New York City. He married and lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn for forty years. In the early 1890s, Rhead became a prominent poster artist. During the poster craze of the early 1890s, Rhead's poster art appeared regularly in Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, St. Nicolas, Century Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, and Scribner's Magazine. In 1895 he won a Gold Medal for Best American Poster Design at the first International Poster Show in Boston. Louis Rhead was one of the most creative, fresh-thinking, and stimulating of American fly-fishing writers, a man of extraordinary gifts. His death was somewhat unusual. A portion of his obituary in The New York Times, Friday July 30, 1926: LOUIS RHEAD, ARTIST AND ANGLER, DEAD. Exhausted Recently by Long Struggle In Capturing a 30-pound Turtle. ... About two weeks ago Mr. Rhead set out to catch a turtle weighing thirty pounds which had been devastating trout ponds on his place, Seven Oaks. After the turtle was hooked, it put up a fight for more than half an hour. Although Mr. Rhead was successful in the end, he became exhausted. A short time later he suffered from his first attack of heart disease. Yesterday's was his second.