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Les Maitres de l’Affiche: Boston Connections-October 2015
Ethel Reed’s Miss Traumerei (Plate 99) first appeared in Les Maitres de l’Affiche in 1898 as a poster promoting a novel by Albert Morris Bagby, from Boston publisher Lamson, Wolffe & Co. in 1895.
Ethel Reed (1874-1912) was an internationally recognized American graphic artist. Born in Newburyport in 1874, the family moved to Boston in 1890 shortly after the death of her father. She studied briefly at the Cowles Art School in Boston in 1893, and after 1894 began to receive public notice for her illustrations. After her engagement to fellow artist Philip Leslie Hale (son of prominent Bostonian Edward Everett Hale) was broken off in 1897, the family moved to London, where Reed worked as an illustrator, in particular, for The Yellow Book, a quarterly literary periodical, which was co-founded by Aubrey Beardsley.
Her works received critical acclaim in America and Europe and are currently exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Ethel Reed’s The Quest of the Golden Girl (Plate 128) also appeared in Les Maitres de l’Affiche in 1898 as a poster promoting a novel by Richard Le Gallienne. An excellent website dedicated to the work of Reed can be found at https://ethelreed.wordpress.com/