Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #294: Miller High Life, For The Taste Of Your Life

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Friday’s ad is for Miller High Life from 1956, displaying a busy, chaotic mess of images including a high life bottle being poured into what looks like a ceramic stein. Then there’s a loaf of a bread and summer sausage with a knife to cut it and napkins (one red and one with a checkerboard pattern) to keep one’s hands clean along with a large pipe and a sculpture of a rooster sitting on a beer keg in the background. With the high life logo hanging in the background, this as just seems way too busy. Sorry for the bad pub, but for me, that’s not in good taste.

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Beer In Ads #290: Coors, His Truth Is Marching On

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Monday’s ad is for Coors from around 1990, featuring the painting by artist Ellis Wilson entitled Funeral Procession. It was painted in the 1950s and currently hangs in the Aaron Douglas Collection in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana.

The painting became well-known in 1985 “thanks to its appearance in the plot of an episode of The Cosby Show in 1985, during the second season of the long-running series. In the program, Mrs. Huxtable acquires the painting—which is ostensibly by her “great-uncle Ellis”—at auction, paying $11,500. At the end of the episode, Dr. Huxtable hung the painting over the living-room mantel, where it would stay for the duration of the series.” Coors used the painting for an ad celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The ad uses the slogan “His Truth Is Marching On” with a subtitle “In memory of the dream …”

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Here’s the original painting:

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Beer In Art #112: Max Liebermann’s Beer Garden In Brannenburg

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This week’s work of art by German artist Max Libermann. The painting, Beer Garden in Brannenburg, was created in 1893 and is currently in the Musee d’Orsey in Paris, France.

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Though it’s referred to by the title “Beer Garden in Brannenburg” or “Biergarten in Brannenburg,” according to the Paris museum, the actual title is “Brasserie de campagne à Brannenburg” or “Country Pub in Brannenburg.” Here’s a description of the painting from Musee d’Orsey.

During his visit to Italy in the spring of 1893, Liebermann stopped in Bavaria, very near to Brannenburg. There he found the tables of a pub set out in the shade of some tall trees, the subject of a number of his paintings. That same year, the young painter Erich Hancke, met Liebermann and discovered the still unfinished Country Pub in Brannenburg as well as the preparatory works for the painting, in particular a sketch in black chalk. Having decided to paint this motif, Liebermann “drew it again, in a larger format and in much more detail In its turn this drawing was transposed on to canvas using a grid”. Astonished that such an unspontaneous method should have been used, so at odds with the look of the painting, Hancke was even more surprised when hearing the painter talk about the small figures in it: “First the shape must be there, he said, and then it has to be taken away”.

In general, it is the space, punctuated by the rows of trees with sunlight filtering through, which is the constant subject in Liebermann’s work. However, when this painting was done, this motif was never used in a pure landscape, but accompanied, like here, by a scene bristling with anecdotal details and movements. This characteristic places Liebermann’s work in the same area as Menzel (1815-1905), who has a similar acute sense of observation and an ability to reproduce scenes of everyday life.

There’s a biography of Max Lieberman at his Art Directory. You can also see more of Liebermann’s paintings at the WikiGallery, Zeno and also the Canvaz. There are also additional links at the ArtCyclopedia.

Guinness Ad #51: Guinness Grenades

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Our 51st Guinness poster by John Gilroy was, like last week’s, probably from World War 2, and shows a group of soldiers practicing their grenade throwing, with one of them substituting a bottle of Guinness for a grenade. Their commanding officer certainly looks surprised to see the Guinness fly.

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Here’s a slightly different version showing one additional soldier.

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Beer In Ads #289: Albion Brewery, We Lead The Way

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Friday’s ad is for the Albion Brewery in Leeds. I’m not sure when the ad is from, though I believe the brewery was founded in 1897 and closed in either 1933 or 1948, the UK National Archives isn’t sure. If the truck is any indication it’s got to be pretty early in the history of automotive transportation. And at some point they stopped giving driver’s licenses to lions, didn’t they?

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Beer In Ads #288: Ballantine’s Wagon Train

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Thursday’s ad is a Ballantine ad from 1947. Part of the history ads featuring clay dioramas, this one shows a wagon heading west, passing a saloon where the bartender is coming out with a mug of beer. The wagon driver’s rope is making the three-ring Ballantine logo, which would be impressive if someone could actually do that in real life.

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