BERN HILL (1911-1977)
180
●
JERSEY CENTRAL - THE BIG LITTLE RAILROAD. Circa 1950s.
23
3
/
4
x18 inches, 60
1
/
4
x46
3
/
4
cm.
Condition B+ / B: restoration and overpainting along horizontal fold; restored loss in top right corner;
restoration at edges.
Bern Hill was a graphic designer and painter. He “worked for the Kudner Agency, a New York City
advertising firm. At the end of 1949, General Motor’s Electro-Motive Division embarked on a rather
radical advertising campaign which included vertical format streamline style paintings for the covers
of Railway Age [Magazine]” (Vintage Rails, January / February 1998, p. 64). Between 1950 and 1956,
Hill painted 65 paintings. “Electro-Motive also produced a series of very high-grade posters of Hill’s
paintings that were overwritten by the marketing theme for that particular railroad . . . it is unknown
if all 65 paintings were turned into posters . . . Hill’s assignment was to portray the ‘feel’ of each
railroad in a scene that often captured the landscape of the individual road and gave the viewer the
sense of that road’s missions — freight, passenger or switching” (Railroad Heritage, No. 6, 2002, p. 10).
[600/900]
