The National Parks Preserve Wild Life WPA Poster, 1936

The story of this poster

Of all the WPA park posters this is the one that gets hung in cabins. Two bighorn rams stand on a grey crag, one in profile and one turned to the viewer, against a sunset laid down in bands of orange and gold, with a line of blue peaks behind. The artist is not recorded on the sheet or in the Library of Congress catalogue; it came out of the Federal Art Project’s New York poster division in 1936, part of a set the Department of the Interior used to argue that the parks were refuges as much as scenery.

The Library of Congress scanned this copy at 300 dpi from a sheet larger than most in the series, which is why it can be printed up to 24×30 inches without leaving our 200-dpi rule — the largest of the poster line. The orange fields show the unevenness of hand screening, kept here; dust and a few specks have been removed and the inks rebalanced without pushing them brighter.

It pairs naturally with its companion sheet, the deer at the pool, and with the Mount Rainier survey map.

Printed to order on archival matte paper or canvas, framed in the country of delivery, and offered only at sizes that fit the sheet.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: trimmed the mount board and scanner margins, balanced levels while keeping the silkscreen's flat inks and paper tone (90% of the original colour retained), removed dust and specks, and applied gentle sharpening. Creases, edge wear and registration slips of the original screen printing are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.