The Echo

William H. Bradley · 1895 · Lithographic Poster

This poster advertises "The Echo," a short-lived Chicago fortnightly billed as "Chicago's Humorous and Artistic Fortnightly." Created around 1895, it shows two women drifting through a tangle of wild plants and waving trees, rendered in Bradley's signature palette of green, red, and yellow with the flat, sinuous linework that defined American Art Nouveau. A contemporary review called it "gay in the extreme, and almost criminal in its cleverness," and it's easy to see why, the composition is dense with pattern but never loses its clarity. It remains one of the defining images of the 1890s American poster craze.

The poster is a picture, the greatest picture the world has ever seen.William H. Bradley

View this poster in The 29 Collection