Art Of American Arms Makers: Marketing Guns, Ammunition, And Western Adventure During The

This illustrated book introduces readers to the commercial work of such well-known artists as Frederic Remington, A. B. Frost, N. C. Wyeth, Philip R. Goodwin, W. R. Leigh, and Carl Rungius. It also explores the role of leading arms makers such as Colt, Smith & Wesson, Remington, Winchester, and Marlin in the dissemination of quality American art for the general public. Commissioned in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by these manufacturers, this original art depicted sporting tableaus and other narrative scenes and reached consumers in the form of pictorial envelopes, catalogs, calendars, posters, and point-of-purchase displays.
The commissioning of such artwork had its origins in the 1800s with chromolithography, a special process of color printing on stone. The new technology contributed to a golden age of illustration between 1880 and 1930, in which advertising art held an important place. The Art of American Arms Makers presents for the first time a selection of such art: the colorful lithographs and often-dramatic paintings used to advertise guns and ammunition.
Encompassing landscape, wildlife, and narrative painting, this artwork features dramatic imagery and evocative depictions of wilderness confrontations between humans and animals. Beyond their artistic merit, however, these images, reproduced here in brilliant color, also convey important information about American values, perceptions, and recreations.