I had looked right past the postcards. Perhaps the pictures of dogs on the covers failed to stop me as they would a dog lover.
Browsing the glass case at the auction house, I had seen nothing that spoke to me, until an assistant placed a tray of hunting-dog postcards in front of me. Someone had loved them dearly because each card was tucked inside a stiff plastic sleeve for protection. Too many collectors don’t bother.
Looking closely, I saw that the postcards were advertising Dupont Shoot Powders, and these were “top dogs” from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The animals were skillfully drawn as portraits – as if they had sat for the artist – and each was identified by name, pedigree and championship year:
Lady’s Count Gladstone, Champion 1900, By Count Gladstone IV – Dan’s Lady
Pioneer, Champion 1906, By Count Whitestone, Bonnie Doone
Joe Cumming, Champion 1899, By Antonio – Picciola
I learned later that the postcards were part of “The Champion Series” reproduced from paintings by artist Edmund H. Osthaus. They bore his signature and the year 1916.
The Dupont Co. used the postcards as advertising to persuade hunters to buy its smokeless gunpowder. Osthaus, who was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States, joined such artists as N.C. Wyeth to paint hunting dogs for the company, which reproduced them on calendars and prints for sale or free.
The Hagley Museum in Wilmington, DE, has more than 40 of the original sporting-art paintings in its collection. Dupont, founded by two French immigrants and known today for its chemicals, got its start in 1802 as a gunpowder-maker near Wilmington. The company began making smokeless gunpowder in the early 1890s at the request of the U.S. government.
Osthaus started the hunting-dogs series in 1896 and by its end in 1910, he had produced 13 watercolors of winners of the National Field Trial Championships. Each postcard was sold by the company for 10 cents.
He was the owner of prize-winning hunting dogs himself, mostly pointers and setters. Around 1911, he painted a portrait of himself cleaning his double-barrel shotgun with three setters nearby.
Osthaus was an avid outdoorsman, enjoying fishing just as much as hunting. Aside from his portraits for Dupont, he also painted hunting dogs as art subjects, along with landscapes of cowboys, horses and cows, among others. His sporting works were done in oil on canvas and watercolor.
Dupont also used the sporting-dog images on envelopes, front and back. Other postcards advertising the gunpowder included game birds by Osthaus, a trap-shooting scene by Wyeth and the Dupont Powder Wagon by Howard Pyle, whose work was commissioned in 1911.
