samuel schmucker, the American Kirchner

Few postcard dealers in Britain seem to have ever heard of Samuel Schmucker (1879-1929), which is quite astonishing given that in the United States he is unanimously regarded as the greatest American artist of the Golden Age of picture postcards. It is certainly no exaggeration to say that his reputation in the US is comparable to that of Raphael Kirchner in Europe. Schmucker is the American Kirchner.

Born in 1879 (when Kirchner was two) in Reading, Pennsylvania, he was a direct descendant of one Christian Schmucker who immigrated to America from his native Switzerland in 1752. As a young boy he contracted polio and as a result was crippled in his right arm and hand. This, however, did not prevent him from using it to develop the considerable artistic talent that he betrayed from early youth. He studied art in Philadelphia, first at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and then at the Howard Pyle Institute (where one of his fellow students was Jessie Willcox Smith, some of whose lovely, tender paintings of childhood scenes also appeared on postcards), and soon after, in his early twenties, set up his own studio to enter a moderately successful career as a commercial artist, producing many superb postcards along the way. He died of heart failure, far too early, in 1921, aged 42. (Kirchner had died in 1917, aged 41.)

Schmucker left behind his wife Katherine Rice, whom he seems to have loved dearly. All the women featuring on his postcards were modelled on her (just as Kirchner used to model his delicate child women on his wife Nina). Schmucker’s art transformed Katherine into an instantly recognizable female type, the ‘Schmucker Girl’, which was quite different from Charles Dana Gibson’s then immensely popular and far more stylish and aloof hourglass-figured ‘Gibson Girl’. Gibson, whose postcard work, while readily available in Britain, is almost completely ignored by collectors today, despite the high artistic standard and the considerable wit and humour of his drawings, presented the ideal woman as a lean, sophisticated, independent, arrogant, well-to-do society girl. In contrast, the Schmucker Girl (with her more evenly proportioned body, high cheekbones, straight nose, wide-set eyes, thin eyebrows, upswept hair and full red lips) was more earthy, less at home in high society where Gibson girls were small-talking their way to a good match, and more at home in nature, where she would be silently communicating with natural things, with birds and fish and all things grown, with stars, sun and moon, and all the elements.

Schmucker designed at least 262 postcards, the majority (ca. 130) for Winch between 1909 and 1914 (and that is just counting the basic designs and not the many variations). 10 were published by the National Art Company, 40 by Raphael Tuck (which are the easiest to find in Britain, except the rare and very much sought after Halloween designs in the series 100), and 32 by Whitney. The rest (52 cards in eight sets) appeared with the Detroit Publishing Company in 1907 and 1908. Unlike many other companies at the time, the Detroit Publishing Company did not have their cards printed in Germany, but instead did their own printing, and not badly either. They were reputed to be America’s best printing company. They published some of Schmucker’s best work. However, for this very reason the DPC cards tend to be quite expensive and prices in excess of £100 are the norm rather than the exception. Cards published by Winsch are generally cheaper, with the Thanksgiving cards at the lower end (between £10 and £20) and the Halloween cards at the higher end (£80 plus). The Whitney and Tuck cards (again, with the exception of the Halloween cards) are also quite affordable (between £10 and £20).

Most of Schmucker’s cards are unsigned. Those that are signed (mostly the cards published by the DPC) just show his initials SLS, which are often hidden in the design. A checklist can be found in J.L. Mashburn’s Artist-Signed Postcard Price Guide (2^nd. edition, Colonial House 2003). Especially in his earlier work for the DPC there is a strong influence of Pre-Raphaelite symbolism (Gabriel Dante Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones) and Art Nouveau (Beardsley, Will Bradley). He clearly liked bold, bright colours, strong greens, reds, yellows and blues, complemented by lots of gold, and often included fantasy elements in his designs.

In 1995 Jack and Susan Davis discovered in a warehouse in Montana as part of an estate 77 original watercolour paintings by Schmucker, some of which had been published as postcards by the DPC. It seems that the others were also meant to be published as postcards, but for some reason they never were. These unpublished paintings are so beautiful that as a postcard collector one can only deeply regret this. But the rest are certainly also worth spending a small fortune on. A book telling the story of the discovery of Schmucker’s lost art and displaying splendid reproductions of both his published and unpublished artwork was edited by Jack Davis and Dorothy Ryan: Samuel L. Schmucker The Discovery of His Lost Art (Old America Antiques, 2001).

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