Poster, Pan-American Exposition (Primary Title)

Evelyn Rumsey Cary, American, 1855 - 1924 (Artist)

1901
American
Prints
Works On Paper
commerical lithograph
Place Made,United States
Sheet: 48 × 25 1/4 in. (121.92 × 64.14 cm)
Framed: 55 3/4 × 32 3/4 in. (141.61 × 83.19 cm)
90.111
Not on view

Though artist, patron, and suffragette Evelyn Rumsey Cary was most well known for her portrait paintings, she also designed a number of posters. This advertisement promotes the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, a world’s fair held in Buffalo, New York. The design originated from Cary’s 1901 oil painting The Spirit of Niagara, depicting the same ghostly figure of a woman who appears to be one with the waterfall, while the text and border were later added by the designer Frederic Flagler Helmer.

Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund and Sydney and Frances Lewis Endowment Fund
Frederick Brandt, Designed to Sell: Turn of the Century American Posters, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1994
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC

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