WILLARD FREDERIC ELMES (1900-1956) ART INSTITUTE / BY THE ELEVATED LINES. 1924.
80x41 inches, 203¼x104 cm. National Printing and Engraving Co., Chicago.
Condition B+: restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; repaired tears and restoration in image; repaired tears and creases in margins and at edges. Three-sheets.
Elmes, who is best known for his Mather Work Incentive posters, also designed about a half-dozen images for the Chicago Rapid Transit and the North Shore Line in the 1920s. The unusual, large format of some of these posters was unique to Chicago. Here, the Edward Kemeys' sculpted lion on the South side of the Museum's entrance, "in an attitude of defiance,” stands in front of the entry loggia with its arches and columns. The majesty of the Beaux Arts Institute, designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, emerges out of the blue twilight evening, ingeniously depicted by Elmes without using any outline. The original pedestal lamps, visible here shining yellow in the twilight, are no longer in place. "Elmes proves himself to be a refined designer with a delicate feeling for continuity and balance in composition. He has a sensitive appreciation of colour and a fondness for harmonies in the lower keys, while his peculiar ability to see pattern in buildings and trees and figures, together with his expressive manner of drawing, help in no small way to give his designs that foremost place which they hold in current advertisement art" (Posters & Publicity, 1926, p. 7). Rare. We could find only one other copy at auction. Modern Publicity / Posters and their Designers, 1924, p. 21, AIC 2005.12, V & A E.3610-1922.