Is this the world's first ski poster?

Ernest Haskell's Truth / Xmas, New York, 1896. 

Skiing for sport began in the mid 19th century in Northern Europe, although the activity as a means of transport and hunting dates back thousands of years. Americans caught on in the early 20th century, and by the late 1920s the country was in love with the sport, with winter resorts in full swing--kicking off what is known as the Golden Age of American Skiing.


Ernest Haskell's 1896 poster advertising the magazine Truth, which depicts a lovely lady skiing downhill, is the earliest American ski poster, predating the first American book on skiing by nearly 10 years.

Theodore A. Johnsen's The Winter Sport of Skeeing, was the first American ski book.
It was published in 1905.

Haskell's design has a similar head start on the first European posters for the sport, which are generally believed to be promotional images for the French winter resort town of Chamonix, from the early 1900s.

Chamonix / Mont Blanc, after Abel Faivre, circa 1985.

If you have an example of an earlier ski poster, send us an email: blog@swanngalleries.com