America’s Woman Poster Artist Who Vanished | Ethel Reed

Ethel Reed became one of America’s most celebrated poster artists while barely out of her teens. Then, almost as quickly as she appeared, she vanished from public life. At twenty, Reed designed the Boston Sunday Herald poster that launched her career. Within a remarkably short period she had produced more than twenty-five posters, become a media celebrity, been photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston and F. Holland Day, and seen her work included in the prestigious French series Les Maîtres de l’Affiche. Then she left America. In London, Reed contributed to The Yellow Book alongside the world associated with Aubrey Beardsley, illustrated books for publisher John Lane and continued producing strange, elegant and increasingly theatrical work. By the end of the 1890s, however, her extraordinary public career was effectively over. For decades, that was where the story seemed to end. Later research reconstructed a far more complicated life involving marriage, motherhood, poverty, declining health and addiction. Ethel Reed died in London in 1912, just twelve days before her thirty-eighth birthday. This is the story of a young artist who became famous with astonishing speed, helped define the golden age of the American poster, and then seemed to disappear. 00:00 Introduction 00:45 Twenty-Five Posters 04:04 Her Own Best Subject 05:48 The Yellow Book 07:53 What Happened to Ethel Reed? Subscribe for more extraordinary artists you may never have heard of:    / @shootsmoon   Shoot The Moon art and merchandise: https://www.redbubble.com/people/Shoo... IMAGE ATTRIBUTIONS Ethel Reed, Fairy Tales - 1896 Reproduction: Jl FilpoC Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Image cropped/edited for video presentation. Edward Penfield, About Paris - 1895 Reproduction: Boston Public Library Licensed under CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Image cropped/edited for video presentation. Ethel Reed, The Boston Sunday Herald: Easter - c.1895 Reproduction: Boston Public Library Licensed under CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Image cropped/edited for video presentation. Ethel Reed, Behind the Arras - 1895 Reproduction: Boston Public Library Licensed under CC BY 2.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Image cropped/edited for video presentation. #EthelReed #ArtHistory #ArtNouveau #WomenArtists #PosterArt Shoot The Moon | Artists You Never May Never Have Heard Of.