TL;DR — Louis Rhead’s poster for the Century Magazine’s 1894 Midsummer Holiday Number is a high point of the American magazine poster — flat decorative colour and strong outline in the manner Rhead had absorbed from the French designer Eugène Grasset. An English-born, American-based artist, Rhead brought a distinctly Art Nouveau elegance to the New York magazine world of the 1890s. This is the story of the artist and his decorative style.
By Found Poster · Published August 2026
The poster and the magazine
American magazines in the 1890s competed on their newsstand posters, and the great New York monthlies — the Century, Harper’s, Scribner’s, St. Nicholas — commissioned artists to design them. Rhead’s Century posters are among the most purely decorative of the group: flat areas of colour, a firm ornamental outline, and figures set in stylised landscapes of flowers and foliage. They look less like advertisements than like framed decorative panels, which is exactly why they were collected.
Louis Rhead, from Staffordshire to New York
Louis Rhead (1857–1926) was born into a family of ceramic decorators in Staffordshire, England, trained in London and Paris, and emigrated to the United States around 1883 to work for the publisher Louis Prang. He spent the rest of his career in New York, designing posters, book covers and illustrations.
Crucially, Rhead studied the work of the French Art Nouveau designer Eugène Grasset, and carried Grasset’s flat, decorative, medievalising manner into American commercial work. In 1895 he was given a one-man exhibition at the Salon des Cent in Paris — rare recognition for an artist working the American magazine trade.
A decorative, flat style
Rhead’s hallmark is decorative flatness: strong contour lines enclosing flat colour, ornamental borders, and a preference for stylised nature over realistic space. It sits between Grasset’s French decoration and the American clarity of Penfield and Bradley, and it gives his posters a calm, tapestry-like quality.
Where it belongs
Rhead’s decorative, tapestry-like posters suit a boutique hotel, a bookshop café, or a tea room — rooms that want warmth and pattern rather than punch. Hung with Penfield and Bradley, he completes the range of the American magazine poster, adding the most ornamental, French-influenced voice in the group.
Rhead’s Century and magazine posters are catalogued individually in our archive, restored for printing. Browse American Art Nouveau →
Frequently asked questions
Who was Louis Rhead?
Louis Rhead (1857–1926), an English-born, American-based designer of magazine posters and book covers, known for a flat decorative Art Nouveau style learned from the French designer Eugène Grasset.
What makes his posters distinctive?
Strong outlines enclosing flat colour, ornamental borders and stylised nature — a tapestry-like decorativeness more French than the crisp American manner of Penfield.
How is he connected to French Art Nouveau?
He studied Eugène Grasset closely and brought Grasset’s decorative style into American magazine work; in 1895 he had a solo show at the Salon des Cent in Paris.
Further reading
- Edward Penfield — the crisp American voice
- Will Bradley — the ornamental American voice
- American Art Nouveau and the poster (scheduled in this series)
- David W. Kiehl, American Art Posters of the 1890s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1987)
Found Poster restores Belle Époque and Art Nouveau posters from museum archives into archival-quality files you print yourself. Browse the archive · How to print & frame.
