Art: Christmas Cards

Nearly a century ago in England, an etcher named W. M. Egley Jun. covered an etching plate with cheery, squiggly figures, inscribed it: “A Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year to You,” sent impressions to his friends. So far as is known, this was the first Christmas card. Today, in the U. S. alone, Christmas cards have become a $30,000,000-a-year industry. Artistically most cards are loathsome, crawling with tinsel, Scottie dogs and bilious greenery, but good U. S. artists have begun to muscle in on the trade.

Last fortnight Manhattan’s American Artists Group, composed of dozens of top-notchers, put its cards on sale. Prices: 5¢ to 25¢. Artists Harry Wickey, Rockwell Kent and Adolf Dehn began the Christmas card project in 1935. None of the artists made pictures expressly for cards; works were chosen for their reproducibility. But three years ago, as a sop to gum-chewers, the Group added a side line: Christmas cards of conventional kind, designed by professional illustrators. There are now 1,500 cards on the Group list, to which 200 a year are added. The 168 participating artists get 10% royalties, ranging from an average $300-400 to as much as $800 a year.

Some artists get invaluable publicity from Christmas cards. Dale Nichols hit the jack pot after his The End of the Hunt was put on a card. He got a $4,000-a-year Carnegie Rotating Professorship job at the University of Illinois, and the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan bought The End of the Hunt—although it denies that the Christmas card had anything to do with it. Some other Group artists who, by accident or design, have done cardworthy snowscapes, religious or convivial scenes: Emil Ganso, Doris Rosenthal, Lauren Ford, Henry Varnum Poor, Jozef Bakos, N. C. Wyeth, Aaron Bohrod, Waldo Peirce, Georges Schreiber.

The fuddy-duddy Metropolitan has since 1916 mounted prints to be sold as Christmas cards, but even today, when it sells color prints, no artist draws royalties; the latest Metropolitan card dates from about 1860. Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art sells cards (at three for 10¢), none of which has any connection with Christmas: the artists are Rousseau, Rivera, Picasso (two classic drawings). The San Francisco Museum of Art has ten cards, including a Foujita, a Rivera. To its patrons the Associated American Artists Gallery in Manhattan sells cards in limited editions; its sales last year totaled 350,000. Of its 16 subjects, the four in color are all thoroughly summery: canvases by Schreiber, Ernest Fiene, Peter Kurd, Nicolai Cikovsky. The Schreiber, Mississippi Moon, shows a whizzing horse & buggy. The American Artists Group got the same Schreiber horse & buggy, whizzing along in a snow scene.