Lot 75A
Rare hard to find PRR poster. John Newton Howitt was born May 7, 1885 in White Plains, New York. At age four John Newton Howitt contracted polio. During his convalescence, his father interested him in drawing. After his recovery he wore a metal brace on his right leg. In 1901 he graduated White Plains High School at age sixteen. In 1902 Howitt studied in New York City at the Art Students League with George Bridgman and Walter Clark. Howitt was a devoted landscape painter. He was a lifelong member of both the Westchester Arts & Crafts Guild as well as the Hudson Valley Art Association. He exhibited in their annual shows, won awards, gave demonstrations, headed committees, and served as president. His friend and neighbor, the pulp artist Sidney Riesenberg was also a member. Howitt's landscapes were sold at fine art galleries in New York City, such as the Art Center Gallery, The City Club of New York, and Ainslie Galleries. In 1905 he began to sell freelance illustrations to The New York Herald Tribune, This Week, The American Sunday Monthly Magazine, The Hampton Magazine, and Broadway Magazine. Howitt then worked for Red Book, Woman's Home Companion, The Household, Maclean's, and Scribner's. He also painted advertisements for Crisco Shortening, Devoe Paints, Jello Foods, and Post Bran Flakes. In the decade after the war, Howitt worked for Country Gentleman, Farm Life, Liberty, and The Saturday Evening Post. When commerce collapsed during the Great Depression, slick magazines suffered from lost advertising. Howitt began to work for pulp magazines instead. The pulps were funded by newsstand sales and were growing extremely profitable as idle workers began to read more. Howitt was an excellent pulp cover artist. He signed his covers for Western pulps and romance pulps with his regular professional signature, "JOHN NEWTON HOWITT," but he also painted many ghastly and shocking pulp covers, and these were all signed with only his initial "H." Most pulp artists who wanted to disown the covers would conventionally leave them unsigned and uncredited. Howitt's "H" is only a modest deception, which seems to imply some ambivalent pride in even his most outrageous pulp covers. He sold freelance pulp covers to Adventure, Dime Detective, Dime Mystery, Horror Stories, Love Story, Operator 5, The Spider, Terror Tales, Top-Notch, The Whisperer, and Western Story. By 1939 the economy had recovered to the point that Howitt once again received ample assignments from slick magazines, such as Liberty and The Saturday Evening Post, so he stopped working for the pulps. During WW2 Howitt was too old to serve, but he did contribute several important propaganda posters to the war effort. John Newton Howitt died at age 72 on January 25, 1958. We describe all items to the best of our ability as we are not experts on everything. Please ask specific questions on details or condition prior to bidding, ALL ITEMS ARE SOLD AS IS. We box and ship to keep costs low. We do not use a packaging service, unless the costumer prefers us to use them. We can ship either USPS or UPS
- Dimensions: 24" x 31"
- Condition: Good Condition with some fraying on the edges. There is a some water staining on the backside on the edge. No major tears and it has the original 3 holes on the top to display the poster (see pics)
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