Monday’s holiday ad is for Miller High Life showing an idyllic country scene complete with newly fallen snow, a barn and silo, with a small chapel in the distance, as a horse and sleigh pulls two couples through the white landscape. Ah, Christmas like it never was.
This week’s work of art is by John Lewis Krimmel. He was born in Germany, but emigrated to the U.S. in 1809 to join his brother in Philadelphia. Instead of joining the family business, he took up painting and became well-known for his genre paintings depicting everyday life in the city of brotherly love. One of his most well-known paintings was “The Village Tavern,” painted between 1813-14.
The painting is also sometimes called “In An American Inn,” and just from searching around, it appears their may be more than one of them, as there seem to be various references to both that are very, very similar, but not quite exactly the same, with slightly different colors and with the size of what’s depicted more or less, as if Krimmel painted the exact same scene more than once.
Perhaps most curiously, apparently the painting was used by prohibitionists as propaganda. “The depiction of a mother and daughter trying to persuade the drunken father to come home has caused historians of the temperance movement to praise In an American Inn as the first work of an American artist to illustrate this issue.” But that interpretation does not seem obvious to me. Nothing in the woman or the child’s demeanor suggests to me that they’re trying to persuade the man of anything. And the man is raising his glass to her with a smile on his face. And nobody else around them seems particularly alarmed by them being there. In fact, many people in the tavern don’t seem to be paying them any mind whatsoever, as if their presence is not so unusual. It just looks an old-fashioned scene from the TV show Cheers, with several groups in the inn.
The Woodmere Art Museum has in its collection the “Study for ‘Village Tavern,'” oil on wood panel, also done in 1814.
And the Winterthur Library has two early drawings that would eventually become the painting, done in ink and ink wash over pencil.
They contain all the elements of the finished work, but you can see the artist trying out different placements for the characters in the painting.
You can read Krimmel’s biography at Wikipedia or at Terra. There are links to more Krimmel resources at the ArtCyclopedia. You can also see more of his work at the Art Renewal Center, Scholar’s Resource, the Philadelphia Academy and the American Gallery.
Our 98th Guinness ad shows a happy and satisfied-looking can of Guinness relaxing at home in a green comfy chair. The slogan for the ad is “Guinness at Home.”
Friday’s holiday ad — believe it or not, the 500th ad I’ve posted! — is for Schaefer beer. I don’t think it is, strictly speaking, an ad but a display piece, presumably for a bar or a retail store. I’m not sure of its age, but I’m guessing 1950s. I like the subtle double meaning of the slogan “Merry Christmas All Around!” Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, but it seems like both wishing everyone around a Merry Christmas and buying them “a round” … of Schaefer.
Thursday’s holiday ad is another one for Rheingold Extra Dry Lager Beer, from 1952. This time, Miss Rheingold 1952, Anne Hogan, is out singing Christmas carols by herself, which means she has to hold both the lamp and the songbook.
Wednesday’s holiday ad is for Rheingold Extra Dry Lager Beer, from 1955. The ad features Miss Rheingold from that year, Nancy Woodruff, out singing Christmas carols with a “friend.”
Before Prohibition became a reality, the prohibitionists used shameless propaganda to advance their cause, and it became increasingly absurd as time went on. When the temperance movement began in the 1830s, it was primarily against hard liquor, and beer was thought of as a drink of moderation, which by comparison it was. But over time, the movement became more and more intolerant of not just all alcohol, but many other things, such as coffee, pickles, pie, sugar, tea, and even meat. Abstinence itself became a goal. It became entirely fanatical, and in many cases was backed by religious factions and led by preachers. This transition is chronicled nicely in Jessica Warner’s “All or Nothing: A Short History of Abstinence in America.”
So by 1915, when this piece of propaganda was published, the prohibitionists were in the full flower of absurdity. It’s from a temperance program by evangelist Thomas F. Hubbard, published by the Wagoner Printing Company of Galesburg, Illinois. It’s showing how you could destroy the life of your son by being an “indulgent mother,” leading them down the path (or stairs) to “a drunkard’s grave.” So remember; never, ever be nice to your children. Just look what might happen.
See if you can follow the logic. If you allow your son to have a little food between meals, a.k.a. “a snack,” it will undoubtedly make him ill, causing you to ease his pain by giving him — gasp — medicine and “soothing syrups.” That, in turn, will undoubtedly lead you to let him eat too many pickles and pork (it’s always bacon’s fault) and “Mexicanized Dishes and pepper sauces,” you know … spices! But once he’s got a taste for flavor, he won’t be so easily satisfied anymore. Hot foods and the “other white meat” will, of course, lead your son to an indulgent life of rich pastry and candy, damn the luck. He’ll want to wash down all those sweet confectionaries with “tea, coffee and coca” (sic). And you know that can’t be good. It’s a slippery slope from there. He’ll then want to drink “sodas, pop and ginger ale.” After that, your son will need to relax with a cigarette or other tobacco. What else could he possibly want? He had no choice, really. You can’t really blame him. After soda pop, everyone needs to light up. It’s only natural. And once you begin smoking, you can’t really help but start gambling. It’s inevitable. Once you light up that ciggie, playing cards, throwing dice and picking up a pool cue can’t be far behind. It just can’t be helped. And you know what every gambler on the face of the Earth does, right? You got it: drink “liquor and strong drink.” And he can’t just drink it on occasion, but he keeps on drinking it, never stopping until he reaches “a drunkard’s grave.” And all because you gave him some Goldfish or Cheez-Its between meals. It’s so obvious. One unbroken chain from snacking to death, with no possible way to break the cycle. It’s like walking down the stairs. Gravity takes over and you can’t help but keep taking each successive step until you have one foot in the grave.
It is, of course, completely absurd, but one has to assume prohibitionists really believed it, just as some people today actually believe that one drink makes someone an alcoholic. And while I can’t imagine today’s anti-alcohol groups rising to this level of evangelical disinformation, they are, sad to say, moving in that direction. Alcohol Justice, for example (who insist they’re not neo-prohibitionists), has hardened their position of late and now takes the position that there are no safe levels of moderate drinking. They no longer take issue with whether one drink, or two drinks or however many drinks is appropriate for moderate consumption. They’re now proselytizing that zero is the only number of drinks that will keep you from falling into a life of ruin and becoming a burden on society, costing the teetotalers many millions of dollars. Total abstinence is now the only way to save yourself. That sure sounds like history repeating itself to me. With MADD, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and many others turning toward this position and using increasingly absurdist propaganda, often in the form of “pseudo-scientific studies,” to further their agenda how long can it be before we see this sort of thing in the present. So remember mothers, keep beating your children and never indulge them anything, no matter how much pain they’re in or how much pleasure it might give them. Compassion and love are for sissies. If you want to keep your son out of the drunkard’s grave, you’ll need to crack the whip. After all, it’s for their own good. I’m sure the neo-prohibitionists would approve.
Modern anti-alcohol propaganda: beer leads directly to heroin, or beer is the same as heroin.
Tuesday’s holiday ad is for Schlitz, from 1959. The ad shows a couple, with the man holding a beer and the woman a small, wrapped Christmas gift. But what’s not clear is whether they’re outside or if that snowy tree-lined scene behind them is looking through a large window. Because they don’t look like they’re dressed warmly enough to be outside, but I see no signs of a window, either. But I love the slogan. “Know the real joy of good living ….”
I suspect many of you watched the Ken Burns documentary series Prohibition, based on the Daniel Okrent book Last Call, when it aired a few months ago on PBS. In the latest issue of Reason magazine there is an interview with Ken Burns, discussing the documentary. Since they mentioned that there was a filmed version of the interview on Reason.tv, I thought I’d share that version of the Prohibition interview.
Monday’s holiday ad is for the Canadian beer O’Keefe Ale, from 1958. With the slogan “… dans l’esprit des fetes!” — “in the holiday spirit” — it features a fetching couple under the mistletoe pouring a glass of O’Keefe Ale.
