Louis Rhead - Harper's Bazar Thanksgiving 1892, Harpers magazine posters

In the United States Thanksgiving is observed on the fourth Thursday in November. In Canada - on the second Monday of October. The tradition of Thanksgiving started with the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth, Massachusetts. They first held a celebration of their harvest in 1621. The first national Thanksgiving Day was proclaimed by President George Washington in 1789. It became a holiday in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared that the last Thursday in November should be celebrated as Thanksgiving. Since then it has been celebrated every year and is an official federal holiday that was moved to the fourth Thursday of November in 1941 by President Franklin Roosevelt. Many cities have large parades on Thanksgiving Day. Perhaps the largest and most famous parade is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. Another popular way to spend the day is watching NFL football. The traditional food for the Thanksgiving meal includes a turkey, cranberry sauce, potatoes, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, vegetables, and pumpkin pie. Each year a live turkey is presented to the President of the United States who then "pardons" the turkey and it gets to live out its life on a farm.

Louis' father was a highly respected gilder and ceramic artist. In the 1870s, George Rhead taught art and design in Staffordshire schools and founded Fenton School of Art. Louis and all his siblings attended their father's art classes and worked in the potteries as children. Because Louis demonstrated exceptional talent, when he was thirteen in 1872, his father sent him to study in Paris, France with artist Gustave Boulanger. In 1879 he gained a scholarship at the National Art Training School, South Kensington, London. In 1883 at the age of twenty-four, Louis Rhead was offered and accepted a position as Art Director for the U.S. publishing firm of D. Appleton in New York City. He married and lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn for forty years. In the early 1890s, Rhead became a prominent poster artist. During the poster craze of the early 1890s, Rhead's poster art appeared regularly in Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine, St. Nicolas, Century Magazine, Ladies Home Journal, and Scribner's Magazine. In 1895 he won a Gold Medal for Best American Poster Design at the first International Poster Show in Boston. Louis Rhead was one of the most creative, fresh-thinking, and stimulating of American fly-fishing writers, a man of extraordinary gifts. His death was somewhat unusual. A portion of his obituary in The New York Times, Friday July 30, 1926: LOUIS RHEAD, ARTIST AND ANGLER, DEAD. Exhausted Recently by Long Struggle In Capturing a 30-pound Turtle. ... About two weeks ago Mr. Rhead set out to catch a turtle weighing thirty pounds which had been devastating trout ponds on his place, Seven Oaks. After the turtle was hooked, it put up a fight for more than half an hour. Although Mr. Rhead was successful in the end, he became exhausted. A short time later he suffered from his first attack of heart disease. Yesterday's was his second.

Harper & Brothers began publication of Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1850. It was renamed Harper’s Monthly Magazine in the 1900 Christmas issue. Edward Penfield served the Harpers as staff illustrator, editor, and art director from 1890 to 1901. Penfield created his first lithograph for Harper’s Magazine in 1893. He made posters advertising each successive issue of the magazine for over seven years. Penfield also created advertisements and cover designs for books published by Harper and Brothers.