Catalog entry

Commentary

One of Lane & Scott’s earliest commissions was this advertisement for “Oak Hall,” a Boston store that sold ready-made clothing. It appeared in a pamphlet, Oak Hall: or The Glory of Boston: A Poem in Four Parts, printed by Mead & Beal in 1844. According to the preface, the “poem gives a descriptive account of the external and internal wonders of the celebrated fashionable clothing emporium.” Publishing a poem in a trade catalogue was an innovative approach to advertising at the time.

George W. Simmons's store in Boston was popularly known as "Oak Hall" for the ornate woodwork on its front door. It sold all kinds of ready-made clothing for men, including that needed by sailors, and, later, sets of clothing for those headed for the California gold fields. It was renowned also for its ambitious and creative advertising campaigns.

This elaborate trompe l'oeil picture by Lane was the folded frontispiece of a small advertising booklet for the store. In the mid-1840s, Lane was living in Boston and working as a lithographer—a partner in his own firm with John Scott. The prints the firm is known to have produced include architectural and town scenes, ship portraits, and landscapes.

This print is unlike any of those, perhaps due to George Simmons's creative ideas. The print creates the illusion that the viewer is standing on the sidewalk looking through the front door into a long salesroom that extends far into space. The text below the image is angled in an unconventional way (a type-setting challenge) and uses humor in addition to plaudits to poke fun at commercial rivals as it also promoted Oak Hall's many advantages.

–Melissa Geisler Trafton