Louis Rhead

Louis Rhead

Century Magazine Midsummer Holiday Number 1894

Louis John Rhead (* 6. November 1857 in Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent ( Staffordshire ); † 29. July 1926 in Amityville , New York ) was an American commercial artist of the Art Nouveau .

Life

His father, George W. Rhead, was a well-respected blacksmith and ceramic artist. In the 1870s, George Rhead taught art and design in schools in Staffordshire. He founded the Fenton School of Art . Louis and all of his siblings attended their father's art class and worked in the ceramic factories as children. His brothers George Woolliscroft Rhead (1855-1920) and Frederick Alfred Rhead (1856-1933) also became known as artisans.

Since Louis showed an extraordinary talent in 1872 at the age of 13, his father sent him to Paris to study with the artist Gustave Boulanger . After three years in Paris, Louis Rhead worked as a ceramic artist in the ceramic works of Mintons Ltd. in Stoke-upon-Trent and later at Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. In 1879 he received a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in South Kensington . After graduating from South Kensington in 1881, Louis Rhead worked briefly for Wedgwood & Co. Ltd. in Tunstall and for the London publisher Cassell & Co. Ltd.

In the fall of 1883 Louis Rhead emigrated to the United States . He became art director at New York publisher D. Appleton & Company at the age of 24 . In 1884 he married Catherine Bogart Yates and became an American citizen. Louis and Catherine lived in Flatbush , Brooklyn , for forty years .

In the early 1890s Rhead was active as a poster artist. The influence of the Swiss artist Eugène Grasset is noticeable in his works . Rhead's work has appeared regularly in Harper's Bazaar , Harper's Magazine , St. Nicolas Magazine , The Century Magazine , Ladies' Home Journal, and Scribner's Magazine . In 1895 he won a gold medal for the best American poster design at the first international poster exhibition in Boston .

In the late 1890s the popularity of poster art declined and Rhead turned his skills to book illustration. From 1902 until his death in 1926, Rhead illustrated numerous children's books. a. published by Harpers.

Rhead was an avid fly fisherman . He published a number of books on fishing from 1902 to 1921 .

Publications (selection)

• A Collection of Bookplate Designs . W. Porter Truesdell, Boston 1907
• American Trout Stream Insects. A Guide To Angling Flies and other Aquatic Insects Alluring to Trout . Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers, New York 1916.
• The Book of Fish and Fishing . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1920.

literature

• Rhead, Louis . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 28 : Ramsden-Rosa . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1934, p. 221 .
• Annette Wagner-Wilke: Rhead, Louis . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 98, de Gruyter, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-11-023263-9 , p. 357.

Web links

Commons : Louis Rhead  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files