Will You Help the Women of France?/Save Wheat

Artist Edward Penfield United States, 1866 - 1925

Printer The W. F. Powers Co. Litho. NY United States

Date1918

Dimensions36 1/4 x 55 1/2 in. (92.1 x 141 cm)

ClassificationsPoster

Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz

Terms

Object numberPH.197

DescriptionThe Division of Pictorial Publicity produced numerous poster designs for the US Food Administration (USFA), an agency established in May 1917 to address serious food shortages in Europe. Under the leadership of Herbert Hoover, it urged Americans to voluntarily sacrifice certain essential foods so that they could be shipped to the Allied countries abroad. On Wheatless Wednesdays, for example, Americans were encouraged to substitute wheat with corn or barley. Starvation was especially prevalent in France where agricultural lands had become battlefields, and women like these were forced to plough the fields themselves in the absence of horses and able-bodied men.

Unlike many of the 318 popular illustrators enlisted by Dana Gibson of the Division of Pictorial Publicity to design posters, cartoons, and printed ephemera for government agencies during World War I, Edward Penfield was not only an established illustrator but also an experienced and much celebrated poster designer. Between 1893 and 1899, in his role as both illustrator and later art director at Harper’s magazine, he produced a series of distinctively aesthetic and sophisticated posters influenced by late-19th century Japanese woodblock prints and the posters of avant-garde French designers like Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Chéret

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