Minnehaha, Laughing Water

Above: Framed View

Above: Detail

On offer is a scarce surviving original Indian Maiden themed mixed media work by L. Goddard. Used as a published calendar by The Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company, Red oaks Iowa in the early 1920's with the title Minnehaha, Laughing Water. In original ornate incredible gesso frame. Comes with a dated 1926 sample calendar featuring the published artwork.

"L. Goddard" was the pseudonym for a pair of enterprising commercial artists: L. G. Woolfenden, a successful Detroit area commercial photographer, and Rudolphe / Rudolph Ingerle a Vienna born fine art landscape artist who lived and exhibited, to great fanfare, at museums and galleries in Chicago in the early 20th century.

Above: Full view of Illustration

Above: Printed 1926 sample calendar included in sale

Above: The artists' signature

Their collaborative efforts resulted in some of the finest and most spectacular images to come out of the Calendar genre. The pair was known for fantasy-laden, Depression-era escapist themes: exotic Indian Maidens, Gypsies, Salomes, Art Deco Egyptian Beauties and Grecian maidens in vivid and evocotive dreamscapes.

The process of the creation of these works was ingenious:

Woolfenden would photograph models in studio settings and these photos would be sized, cut and applied to a canvas. Then Ingerle would create a scene around the figures using oil paints, adding colored details to the photographic element of the works to blend the mediums into a seamless and believable reproducable canvas. Here is a behind the scenes look at a couple of original studio photographs and their completed calendars as printed by Thomas D. Murphy.

Above: Finished L Goddard Print from Thomas D. Murphy

Above: Posed photograph of model by Woolfenden

Above: Largely ignored calendar company requests on verso of photograph for Ingerle

Above: Finished Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company L. Goddard Sample

Above: Posed studio photograph used by Ingerle to create painted scene

Above: Notation on verso of photograph noting that original painting of work was destroyed

Original works by this team are exceedingly scarce. The Thomas D. Murphy Calendar Company destroyed most of the paintings they based their prints off of to prevent images being stolen and then reused by rival calendar companies.