Samuel Lorne Schmucker
1879-1921

Samuel L. Schmucker’s postcard images are some of the finest from the “Golden Age of the Postcard” (1895-1915). His fanciful images, with their intense colors and expert compositional designs, have long captivated postcard collectors. Although collectors have esteemed his work for years it is only recently that scholars discovered Schmucker to be the artist behind the pictures.
Samuel Lorne Schmucker (1879-1921) was born in Reading, Pennyslvania. As a child, a bout with polio partially paralyzed his right arm. This forced him to hold his brushes or pencils in a claw-like grip between his second and index fingers. Instead of moving his hand, he moved his whole arm when sketching or painting. This disability, however, did not detract from his draftsmanship, and by the time he was fourteen, Schmucker’s art was well known in Reading.

Eager to learn more, he left Reading in 1896 to get professional training in Philadelphia. After taking a drawing and a still life class at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Schmucker transferred to the Howard Pyle Institute at Drexel. Unlike the Academy, which focused on the fine arts, the Pyle Institute concentrated on practical illustration. Although he only took classes from Pyle for one year, the noted illustrator’s influence can be seen in all of Schmucker’s paintings.
By 1905, Schmucker had established himself as a commercial artist. In addition to creating postcard images, he supported himself making pen and ink sketches for the fashion plates printed in the Philadelphia Daily Press. For almost ten years Schmucker’s work was printed by two of the largest postcard publishers in the United States – the Detroit Publishing Company, and then the John Winsch Company. Schmucker used his
wife Katharine Rice Schmucker as the model for his distinctive wide-eyed woman. His brightly colored images of women in nature show the artistic milieu of the time. Schmucker’s illustrations take bits and pieces from Pre-Raphaelite art, Howard Pyle and the Brandywine tradition, Japanese art, and the European Art Nouveau movements.

As the postcard craze died down Schmucker found new ways to earn a living. In 1913 Schmucker moved from Wilmington, Delaware to New York City. In the city, Schmucker tried his hand at a number of jobs. For the Mirror Candy Company he worked hand-painting candy boxes and designing candy labels. After a two-year stint as an accountant, Schmucker and two of his friends incorporated the advertising agency Robert Hoyme, Inc. During his years in New York City Schmucker continued to paint and draw. Between 1915 and 1921 he sold approximately 130 postcard designs to the National Art Company. In 1921, Schmucker’s career was cut short when he unexpectedly died from a heart attack. He was only forty-two years old.
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