The Christy Girl, Howard Chandler Christy 1906. This is an attractive art book by Howard Chandler Christy titled “The Christy Girl”, published by Grosset And Dunlap in 1906, with drawings by Howard Chandler Christy and decorations by Earl Stetson Crawford. Christy (1873 - 1952) was an American artist and illustrator from Ohio who was famous for the "Christy Girl”, a colorful and illustrious successor to the "Gibson Girl" by Charles Dana Gibson. Christy is also widely known for his iconic World War I military recruitment and Liberty loan posters, along with his 1940 masterpiece titled "Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States", which was installed along the east stairwell of the United States Capitol, and he was a portrait painter whose sitters included presidents, senators, industrialists, movies stars, and socialites: he painted Theodore Roosevelt as a Lt. Colonel, and Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Other famous people he painted were William Randolph Hearst, the Prince of Wales (Edward VIII), World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, Benito Mussolini, and Amelia Earhart. He first attracted attention with his realistic illustrations and several articles as a combat artist during the Spanish-American War, and after all this catapulted him to national prominence, he decided to turn away from war and patriotic themes and painting soldiers in uniform, and instead, he yearned for beauty and created the "Christy Girl”. During the Great Depression, Christy found new success as a muralist and painter of historical events. The book here has a woman’s portrait in a decorated oval frame on the front cover, with a spine decorated by an artist’s easel and brushes, the decorated front endpapers seem to have been applied upside down, the half-title carries the theme of the Christy girl descending from up above with easels and artist brushes again, the frontispiece depicts an elegant woman posing for her portrait, there are three Contents pages highlighted with “gilt oval mirrors”, sixteen color images, including the frontispiece, and five black and white images with poetry that accompanies each image, the endpaper at the rear is right side up, the pages are not numbered - they’re unpaginated, in fancy book talk - and it comes in the original box that protected the book and told you the theme of the book right way - beauty and women. Earl Stetson Crawford (1877 - 1966) was a painter, printmaker, muralist and illustrator, born in Philadelphia, and grandson of the hat-maker, John B. Stetson (of Stetson hat fame.) The book was originally published by Bobbs-Merrlll in November 1906 and this is a first edition thus by Grosset & Dunlap. The book measures 9 3/4 x 7 1/4 in. wide and the covers are beautiful - very clean and attractive - and the portraits themselves are very clean and bright. There are occasional brown spots in the margins, but they don’t detract from the images in the book. There is a tissue guard that protects the frontispiece as well, and that has some brown spots on it, but it did its job and kept the frontispiece from getting marred. The corners and edges are clean and crisp too, and the only real blemishes are on the box the book came in - the cover is soiled and the edges need some tending to - other than that, a beautiful book that tells you what Howard Chandler Christy was all about. We believe this is the finest copy out there, based on the rare book website we use to evaluate books. #211 #1548