Art of the Draw: Advertising Posters
from the McCormick-International Harvester Collection
I wish to thank you 365 times for [your] calendar. It is a picture of a girl with a harvest hat in the foreground of a harvest field. It is a picture of health and happiness that might be the lot of more farm girls if they knew where happiness lies.
International Harvester customer, 1923
ICONOGRAPHY POSTER
Sex Sells
or many decades, advertisers have
used pictures of attractive women to drum up trade. In
the early 1900s, International Harvester issued a series
of posters and calendars featuring beautiful young
women, often drawn from photographs of models hired by
the advertising department.
![Plano girl in bonnet poster.](images/Mcref11-l.jpg)
Color Lithograph, 1915
Printed by Hayes Lithographing Co.
(Buffalo)
for
International Harvester
Co. (Chicago)
29.5" x 20"