Ethel Reed – When a Meteor Crossed the Night Sky of Art Nouveau

Ethel Reed (1874–1912) was a graphic designer and illustrator from the United States. On March 13, 1874, she was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts. At the age of 12, she won a crayon drawing award at the Essex County Agricultural Fair. Reed’s fresh talent piqued the interest of Laura Coombs Hill, a Newburyport illustrator, and Reed began taking drawing lessons with Coombs later that year. In 1890, Reed and her mother relocated to Boston (her father had died in 1892). She went on to study miniature drawing at the Cowles Art School in Boston a few years later, although she was mostly self-taught.

Reed rose to prominence after designing a series of posters for the Boston Sunday Herald in 1885 and she rapidly established herself as the “brightest shining star” in Boston’s creative community. She spent the majority of her career in Boston and was a prolific artist. Between 1895 and 1897, Reed created a slew of book posters, cover designs, illustrations, and endpapers, earning her international acclaim during a period of poster mania.

Reed’s posters, which primarily featured feminine figures as well as elaborate flower imagery, were inspired by the French Art Nouveau style and Japanese art. Reed’s art includes considerable use of line, similar to many other Art Nouveau pieces that highlight line work. Depending on the poster theme, they might be striking and direct or thoughtful and graceful. Notably, she largely designed book posters with a typographic aspect. The lettering (nearly always a serif font) is crisp and simple to read, never getting caught up in the image, and shines out boldly against the background colors.

In 1896, after a broken engagement, Reed took a cruise around Europe. She and her mother soon moved to London, where Reed resumed her artistic work. There she executed several assignments for the avant-garde British periodical The Yellow Book. However, by 1898 she had vanished entirely from the historical record. Unfortunately, little is known about her subsequent activities or whereabouts. The Beautiful Poster Lady: A Life of Ethel Reed, written by William Peterson and released in 2013, details Reed’s life in poverty and addiction to drugs and alcohol in her later years. Reed was just 38 years old at the time of her death.

Throughout her brief but illustrious career, which spread like a meteor across Boston’s artistic community, Reed was regarded as a prolific and talented artist of her day. She left behind a collection of work that gained her a reputation as one of the most magnificent poster designers and she has remained one of the most enigmatic figures in American graphic design. The majority of Reed’s paintings are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History collections.