"A Real Happy New Year, Amoco Advertisement"   Lot no. 822

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By Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874-1951)

1946
20.00" x 45.00", Framed 26.00" x 51.00"
Oil on Canvas
Signed Monogram Lower Left

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This piece was used for at least two separate Amoco advertisements. "A Real Happy New Year" was Amoco's 1946 New Years Advertisement, Depicting a baby prepared and ready to serve his nation, around the time of WWII. "Best to You" was the Amoco New Years Advertisement from 1952, welcoming in the near year which was a great year for baby boomers.

As Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler have noted in their magnificent art monograph, J. C. Leyendecker, Abrams, 2008, "While the Arrow Collar man was seminal in the business world, the New Year's Baby was perhaps J. C. Leyendecker's greatest contribution to global iconography. He envisioned the New Year's Baby ringing in the New Year for a December 1906 Saturday Evening Post cover. Throughout America, people anxiously awaited the Post's new Baby cover, and the magazine itself became as much a tradition as the mirrored ball dropping in Times Square. Globally, Leyendecker's New Year's Baby became as popular as Santa Claus. It is now embraced as a worldwide symbol for a new beginning and a fresh future."


Artist biographical notes: One of the most successful commercial illustrators of his time, best known for his advertisements for the "Arrow Collar Man." He created 321 covers for the Saturday Evening Post.

 

Exhibitions:

It's a Man's World, Illustration Art by and for Men: November 14-17 2012, Illustration House NYC, The National Arts Club NYC Jan 6- 19 2013

Christie's New York, Illustrating America: Norman Rockwell and His Contemporaries, November 30, 2013- January, 2014



Explore related art collections: Advertisements / Children / New Year's / 1940s / Humor / $50,000-$100,000

See all original artwork by Joseph Christian Leyendecker

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in Montabaur, Germany, and came to America at the age of eight. Showing an early interest in painting, he got his first job at 16 in a Chicago engraving house on the strength of some larger pictures he had painted on kitchen oilcloth. In the evenings after work, he studied under Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute, and saved for five years to be able to go to France and attend the Academie Julian in Paris.

Upon his return, as a thoroughly trained artist with immense technical facility, Leyendecker had no difficulty in obtaining top commissions for advertising illustrations and cover designs for the leading publications. His first Post cover was done in 1899, and he did well over 300 more during the next 40 years. Among the most famous of these was his annual New Years Baby series.

His advertising illustrations made his clients famous. The Arrow Collar Man was a byword for the debonair, handsome male, and women wrote thousands of love letters to him in care of Cluett Peabody & Company. His illustrations for Kuppenheimer Clothes were equally successful in promoting an image of suited elegance. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1977.A major retrospective exhibition of Leyendecker's work was mounted at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1997-98.

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was born in Montabaur, Germany, and came to America at the age of eight. Showing an early interest in painting, he got his first job at 16 in a Chicago engraving house on the strength of some larger pictures he had painted on kitchen oilcloth. In the evenings after work, he studied under Vanderpoel at the Chicago Art Institute, and saved for five years to be able to go to France and attend the Academie Julian in Paris.

Upon his return, as a thoroughly trained artist with immense technical facility, Leyendecker had no difficulty in obtaining top commissions for advertising illustrations and cover designs for the leading publications. His first Post cover was done in 1899, and he did well over 300 more during the next 40 years. Among the most famous of these was his annual New Years Baby series.

His advertising illustrations made his clients famous. The Arrow Collar Man was a byword for the debonair, handsome male, and women wrote thousands of love letters to him in care of Cluett Peabody & Company. His illustrations for Kuppenheimer Clothes were equally successful in promoting an image of suited elegance. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1977.A major retrospective exhibition of Leyendecker's work was mounted at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1997-98.


Kent Steine