6 year old Debbie says about this picture: "I like the pretty colors. I like Santa Claus. I like bells too. I like the toys Santa Claus is carrying in his bag."
3 year old Barbara says about this picture: "I like toys. And I like Santa Claus. I like holly berries. I like bells. I like the holly leaves."
Both girls are right!
This is a charming postcard illustration of Santa Claus (my guess is that this piece is about 100 years old or so) with some of our favorite Christmas-time elements: his sack of toys, always slung over his back, brass bells, and winter time festive holly leaves and berries.
The holly leaves and berries are graphically rendered out of scale to make a nice composition featuring brass bells with the Christmas date contained by them.
Like our last post, Santa's arm is out of proportion - we'll call it a "folk art" touch (as opposed to "poorly rendered"). His face is kind and not unpleasant, but he also seems distant and maybe a bit tired? Poor Santa. It's interesting to see the toys the artist chose to fill Santa's bag: a doll, dollhouse, ball and trumpet. Perhaps these were the must-have toys of the day, or perhaps the sort of "classic" handmade Christmas toys of days gone by were already part of the tradition's canon.
And of course, I have to mention the lettering at the bottom. Awesome blackletter style lettering with very cool initial caps. I especially love the lower case "s."
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