At the market my family frequented when I was a kid, there was always some sort of promotion going on to win your repeat business. If it wasn’t free glasses or low-cost dinnerware, it was encyclopedias and art prints. In those days, most families did one giant weekly shopping trip.
Today’s images are from a set of art prints my family accumulated from the local supermarket, though I don’t remember if we picked each one up individually or as a complete set. They sat in a bottom drawer for at least 40 years before I recently rediscovered them. Click on any image for a larger view.
Some of the images seem familiar to me, so I may have seen them as a child, but more likely it’s their commonality I recognize. We’ve all seen these images, or something very much like them, many times before.
My favorites are the tranquil country scenes near the old millstream, the covered bridge, and the quaint barn. You can almost hear the birds chirping and feel the dappled sunshine on your straw hat. Add a boy and his dog and I’m hooked.
And what is it about ballerinas? Ballerina art was very popular back then.
It wasn’t considered inappropriate for a supermarket give-away to include religious pictures, particularly Christian ones. So in this set there was a young Jesus, a mature Jesus, Mary, and the Last Supper.
All the prints are 8″ x 10″ and suitable for framing. I’m sure many of them ended up on kitchen and living room walls. A couple of the religious ones are signed, but most are not credited.
I guess if there is something rightly called “generic art,” this is it, though I don’t mean to be critical. I actually think I’ll go to the Dollar Store to pick up cheap frames and put up a few of these. But choosing between young Jesus and a precious ballerina is going to be hard.
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This article was last modified on May 17, 2023
This article was first published on December 10, 2010
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