These two 1926 menus feature beautiful paintings from the old Northwest. The first menu doesn’t say so, but the painting is by Swiss-French artist Karl Bodmer, based on sketches he made during a 1833 expedition to the American West and first published in Germany in about 1840 and in England in 1841.
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Perhaps coincidentally, Bodmer was a member of the Barbizon school of painting, which was James J. Hill’s favorite style. The Barbizonians preferred to paint directly from nature and were reacting against the Romantic movement which focused more on emotion than realism.
Click image to download a 834-KB PDF of this menu.
The painting on the second menu is identified as by St. Paul painter Elsa Jemne. In 1925 and 1926, Jemne was sponsored by the Great Northern to visit Glacier Park and paint Indians such as Little Plume, Mrs. Curly Bear, and Lazy Boy, some of whom would also be subjects for Winold Reiss.
Just as interesting as the paintings are the Art Nouveau-style background scenes. These are obviously inspired by Northwest forests but use colors not found in nature. We’ve previously seen backgrounds like this on the 1926 apple blossom menu, suggesting that GN began using these backgrounds in that year.
Although the backgrounds resemble one another, none are exactly alike. What all three menus have in common is that the front background scene is asymmetrical while the right and left sides of the back cover scene are mirror images. Someone at the Great Northern must have been busy creating all these backgrounds.