Edward Penfield

The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are Netherlands and Volendam. Work by Edward Penfield is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

• Born — 2 June 1866 • Birthplace — Brooklyn, New York • Died — 8 February 1925 • Education — Art Students League of New York

He was born June 2, 1866, in Brooklyn, New York, to Ellen Lock Moore and Josiah B. Penfield. He first studied at New York's Art Students League. He worked under George de Forest Brush, who was known for his romantic scenes of American Indian life. He first worked for Harper's Weekly and later became art director. He developed his own unique style of simplified figures with bold outlines in settings free of extraneous detail. He believed, "A design that needs study is not a poster, no matter how well executed." He wrote and published a book titled Holland Sketches, which was published by Scribner's in 1907. • Illustration — Initials of Edward Penfield on a 1918 poster. Penfield lived in New Rochelle, New York, a popular art colony among actors, writers and artists of the period. The community was most well known for its unprecedented number of prominent American illustrators. He was one of the founding members of the New Rochelle Art Association which was organized in 1912.

His posters were bold and stood out from a distance with great clarity. As artists like Alphonse Mucha, Théophile Steinlen and Toulouse-Lautrec popularized the poster in Europe, Penfield accomplished the same feat in the United States. For his posters, Penfield utilized simple shapes and a limited palette of colors that lent themselves to the primitive methods of reproduction of the era.

• Illustration — Harper's Magazine, June 1896 • Illustration — Book cover: Three Gringos by Richard Harding Davis, 1896 • Illustration — Exlibris • Illustration — Harper's Magazine, May 1897 • Illustration — Poster published in Les Maîtres de l'Affiche • Illustration — Collier's automobile number, New York, January 17th, 1903; from the American Art Posters 1890-1920 collection of the Boston Public Library