DuPont Advertising Art

Beginning in the late 1890s, DuPont began commissioning artists to create paintings on specified subjects which represented their products. The earliest and largest group were used to promote purchasing smokeless gunpowder for hunting. Topics focused on hunting and trapshooting. Most included sporting dogs – mainly setters. They were used in a variety of ways such as being reproduced on calendars, trap hangers to hang in trapshooting clubhouses, envelope covers, postcards and prints.

Paintings were commissioned for DuPont Magazine covers from 1918 to 1928 with most of them from 1919. Artists included Herbert Stitt, Charles MacLellan, George Pierce, Harvey Dunn and more. Topics included hunting and trapshooting; dynamite and blasting for coal mines and agricultural uses; Fabrikoid (DuPont’s artificial leather); World War I; paints; and even Scrooge for a 1926 December issue.

During the 1920s, paintings were commissioned for print advertising in magazines such as Good Housekeeping for advertisements on DuPont paint. Most of these feature DuCo car paint but there are also paintings made to promote DuPont furniture and house paint. Many of these images include or feature women because women were becoming a strong influence on the market and discovering their purchasing power.