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Oscar Bryn Paints the Scenery

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Train LoverApril 10, 2013

In addition to his Travel by Train poster, Oscar Bryn did a number of posters and paintings for the Santa Fe Railway. The most famous is his Arizona poster, which looks as if it could have been one of the Travel by Train posters modified for Santa Fe use, but actually dates to 1949, fifteen years after the Travel by Train campaign. Like Bryn’s other Travel by Train poster, this is richly colored but flat, giving a fair representation of the impression people have of the Grand Canyon even if it doesn’t look much like the real thing.

Click to view a 2.1-MB JPG of this poster at 2,500×3,475.

Bryn was born on Honolulu in 1883 but grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he studied at the Mark Hopkins Art Institute (Hopkins being one of the “Big Four” founders of the Central Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads). He worked in the San Francisco Chronicle‘s art department and did some illustration for the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Magazine.

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Hernando Villa Paints the Indians

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Train LoverApril 10, 2013

Hernando Gonzallo Villa was another in the stable of artists nurtured by the Santa Fe Railway in the first half of the twentieth century. Born in 1881 in Los Angeles to parents who had moved there when California was still a part of Mexico, Villa’s father was also an artist who had a studio on the city’s plaza. Villa studied art in school, then started work for a number of businesses.

A 1926 ad for the Chief designed by Louis Treviso. Click image for a larger view.

The tale of Villa’s artwork for the Santa Fe actually begins with Louis Treviso, an artist who was born in 1889 in a covered wagon in Arizona. He designed posters for the Santa Fe before World War I and, after the war–as art director for a San Francisco advertising firm–coordinated Santa Fe’s advertising campaigns. His ads were the first to illustrate the obvious idea of an Indian in full headdress to advertise the Chief, the first all-Pullman train between Chicago and Los Angeles that Santa Fe inaugurated in 1926. This “extra fine, extra fare” train cost $10 more than a sleeper on the slower California Limited, which, at about $130 in today’s money, is actually quite reasonable for a first-class upgrade.

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Sam Hyde Harris Paints the Desert

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Train LoverApril 7, 2013

Though born in England in 1881, Sam Hyde Harris was an artist for the Southwest: though he did not move to the United States until he was 15, he was already drawing scenes of what he imagined the West looked like when he was just 12. When his family did move, they settled in Los Angeles, and for all his life Sam’s art reflected the region’s sun-drenched hues.

Click to download a 1.3-MB, 2,431×3,667 JPG of this poster.

In 1920, the Santa Fe Railway, which was resuming its advertising efforts after World War I, hired Harris to design posters and ads. Harris’ reds, yellows, and blues were perfect for the Santa Fe’s continuing theme of deserts, Indians, and the Grand Canyon.

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The Pastel Ads

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Train LoverMarch 28, 2015

In 1948, the Union Pacific began a new series of magazine ads that emphasized the trains rather than the destinations. Each ad consisted of a beautifully rendered yellow streamliner and another graphic symbolizing the theme of the ad (“economy,” “charm,” “style,” “pleasure”), on a solid-, usually pastel-colored background.

Click any image to see a larger view; most of the larger views are about 1,000×1,500 and all are less than 1 MB.

In place of the four to six paragraphs of text on the destination-themed ads, the pastel ads had just a few words in large script and less than a paragraph of additional text in a smaller gothic font similar to the one used on Union Pacific streamlined locomotives and passenger cars.

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Willmarth Vacation Ads

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Train LoverMarch 30, 2013

In 1946, Union Pacific ran a series of ads featuring Willmarth water colors of vacation destinations such as Colorado, Yellowstone, and Zion. Other ads in the series include California, dude ranches, and Western Wonderlands, but the cartoonish drawings in these ads aren’t signed Willmarth, so they were probably done by other artists.

Click any image to view a larger JPG.

Each ad in the series had a small image at the bottom of a Union Pacific streamliner next to a steam locomotive, no doubt pulling a “limited or Challenger.” Did the Willmarths paint these little images too?

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The “Your America” Campaign

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Train LoverMarch 29, 2013

As World War II was winding down, Union Pacific sponsored a radio show called Your America that was broadcast over 123 stations nationwide. The show featured true stories of Americans at work and at war.

Click any image to view a larger version.

To complement the radio show, Union Pacific commissioned the Willmarths to do eleven paintings, one for each of the states served by the railroad. These paintings were made into posters advertising the radio show and featured in a series of ads in Time and other magazines, mostly appearing in 1945 issues of those publications. This was probably the high point of the Willmarth’s relationship with the Union Pacific, as it allowed the brothers to display a wide range of scenes with some variation in artistic styles.

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Union Pacific Goes to War

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Train LoverDecember 31, 2013

During World War II, the Union Pacific recruited the Willmarths to create a series of morale-boosting posters. Some on-line sources date a few of these posters as early as 1940, but this seems unlikely as the U.S. did not enter the war until the end of 1941. Other posters are dated 1944 which seems more reasonable.

Click image for a larger view.

This poster is curiously flat compared with the later ones and may indicate that it was published earlier and in some haste.

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Sun Valley by the Willmarths

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Train LoverMarch 30, 2013

Seeking to boost winter tourist travel, the Union Pacific Railroad opened Sun Valley, the nation’s first destination winter resort, in 1936. This was just two years after the Travel by Train poster campaign, and the Union Pacific decided to use posters to help publicize Sun Valley as well.

A Union Pacific ad featuring the image on this poster dates it to 1936. Click image to view a 999×1,500 JPG.

Many of the Sun Valley posters were done by the Willmarths. I can’t find much information about the Willmarths on line except that William was a watercolorist, while Kenneth specialized in oils. William was born in 1898 and died in Arizona in 1984. While the Travel by Train posters were signed “The Willmarths,” later posters and paintings were just signed “Willmarth,” and many look like watercolors, suggesting they were done by William Willmarth.

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Travel by Train

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Train LoverMarch 28, 2015

Page 109 of a 2002 book on rail posters, Travel by Train, says,

Out West, a coalition of nearly thirty railroads pooled their resources against the auto and introduced the “Travel by Train” campaign. Their cooperative effort produced nearly a dozen posters portraying a rand of national destinations. Most notable were New York’s Fifth Avenue by Fred Mizen and western landscapes by Denver artist H. M. Veenstra and Oscar Bryn.

This poster is not signed and the artist has not been identified. It is the only one of the seven that has a train in it. Click image to view a 1,323×2,017 JPG.

It is curious that a book named after this campaign says nothing more about the posters and, despite having mostly color portraits of 164 different rail posters, includes not a single one from this campaign. I don’t own any of these posters, but I’ve been able to track down images of seven of the series of “nearly a dozen.”

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