Description
This is a museum-quality original lithograph from the July 1894 issue of The Inland Printer, William Bradley’s striking design that perfectly captures the intersection of fine art and printing innovation. Printed in a distinctive army green ink on premium stock, this cover exemplifies why The Saturday Evening Post called Bradley the “Dean of American Designers.”
The Inland Printer was a Chicago-based trade journal aimed at printers and designers—the first American magazine to change its cover illustration with each issue, a groundbreaking approach that Bradley himself championed. His vision brought European aesthetic sophistication to American printing, inspired by the work of artists like Aubrey Beardsley and the visual language of the British Yellow Book.
The design itself demonstrates Bradley’s mastery of symbolic imagery. A woman wades through a lily pond, her form mirrored by another figure on the bank, while the reflection of a Pan figure peeks through the water lilies. This composition weaves together three threads of the 1890s artistic imagination: the mystery of nature, women as spiritual mediators between earthly and transcendent realms, and the pantheistic deities that haunted fin-de-siècle design.
This is an authentic original lithograph—not a reproduction—professionally acid-free, conservation-mounted, and linen-backed, in very good condition, ready to frame. The poster is housed in museum collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Wolfsonian-FIU, a testament to its significance in American design and printing history. Accompanied by Certificate of Authenticity.
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