Art: Ducks for Christmas

With reckless good will, the U.S. public annually buys, sends and throws in the wastebasket an estimated 30 million dollars worth of Christmas cards.* Among the few thousands that don’t go regularly into wastebaskets—just sometimes—are reproductions of art. The demand for Christmas cards done by artists has resulted in a growing business (about $500,000 in 1940). Today many a U.S. artist, selling up to 50,000 cards at a 10% royalty, makes a considerable part of his annual income at Christmas.

Biggest dealer in the art field, Manhattan’s cooperative American Artists Group, Inc. already has several best-sellers in its catalogue of 99 artists: an autumn scene with four wild ducks rising from a marsh by Watercolorist J. D. Knap and three variations on last year’s best-selling themes: an angel flying over a bleak northern landscape by Rockwell Kent; a railroad snow plow and a country wagon by Chicago Illustrator Dale Nichols; a Rockefeller Center scene by Joseph Golinkin.

Associated American Artists Galleries also found the buying public’s taste turning more conventional. Best selling A.A.A. item so far: another picture of ducks by Etcher Churchill Ettinger.

Newest Christmas greetings:

Sculpture Cards. Following the lead of the American Artists Group, who tried out a series of sculptural Christmas cards, pressed in light relief on metallic-colored paper, the American Sculptors group has got out a series of cards that resemble highly decorative cookies pressed on paper plates, mostly reliefs of human, angelic and animal subjects.

Christmas Books. The American Artists Group has turned out a series of ten Christmas booklets written and illustrated by artists and musicians. Biggest-selling among these booklets (price 50¢) are: a quixotic Christmas story about a dog named Lulu illustrated by Cartoonist Jane Miller; an anecdotal account of a Christmas party in the bleak Alaskan wilderness by Rockwell Kent; a book of Van Loony pictures and Christmas carols by Hendrik van Loon and Pianist Grace Castagnetta.

* Last fortnight Great Britain announced that the British people would forego Christmas cards for 1941. Reason: paper shortage.