2.000 art posters @ New York Library

The New York Library launched a digital gallery with more than 2.000 posters where you can download them for free.

It is a great source of inspiration and it shows us the history of posters in the end of the 19th and early 20th century and the developing of advertising in print.

The advent of the art poster in America is traceable to the publication of Edward Penfield's poster advertising the March 1893 issue of Harper's. Unlike earlier advertising posters, Penfield's work presented an implied graphic narrative to which text was secondary. In this way, and subsequently, in the hands of major artists such as Penfield, Will Bradley and Ethel Reed, the poster moved from the realm of commercial art to an elevated, artistic position.

As a genre, posters very rapidly became the objective of aggressive collectors. As early as 1895, posters began appearing in catalogs of exhibitions and collections. As collectors increasingly sought contemporary publishing posters as discrete objects, they became more desirable than the publication they were advertising. As a result, a shift developed in the industry toward well-designed, illustrated covers of magazines and dust jackets for books; at the same time, newspaper illustration advanced. By the end of the 1890s, the art poster had helped pave the way to a rapidly developing advertising industry that reverberates on Madison Avenue yet today.

Source: The New York Library