As his magazine was rolled to go through the mails, the pictures naturally suffered; Bok therefore decided to print a special edition of each important picture that he published, an edition on plate-paper, without text, and offered to his readers at ten cents a copy.Within a year he had sold nearly one hundred thousand copies, such pictures as W.
L.Taylor's "The Hanging of the Crane" and "Home-Keeping Hearts" being particularly popular.
Pictures were difficult to advertise successfully; it was before the full-color press had become practicable for rapid magazine work; and even the large-page black-and-white reproductions which Bok could give in his magazine did not, of course, show the beauty of the original paintings, the majority of which were in full color.He accordingly made arrangements with art publishers to print his pictures in their original colors; then he determined to give the public an opportunity to see what the pictures themselves looked like.
He asked his art editor to select the two hundred and fifty best pictures and frame them.Then he engaged the art gallery of the Philadelphia Art Club, and advertised an exhibition of the original paintings.No admission was charged.The gallery was put into gala attire, and the pictures were well hung.The exhibition, which was continued for two weeks, was visited by over fifteen thousand persons.
His success here induced Bok to take the collection to New York.The galleries of the American Art Association were offered him, but he decided to rent the ballroom of the Hotel Waldorf.The hotel was then new; it was the talk not only of the town but of the country, while the ballroom had been pictured far and wide.It would have a publicity value.He could secure the room for only four days, but he determined to make the most of the short time.The exhibition was well advertised; a "private view" was given the evening before the opening day, and when, at nine o'clock the following morning, the doors of the exhibition were thrown open, over a thousand persons were waiting in line.
The hotel authorities had to resort to a special cordon of police to handle the crowds, and within four days over seventeen thousand persons had seen the pictures.On the last evening it was after midnight before the doors could be closed to the waiting-line.Boston was next visited, and there, at the Art Club Gallery, the previous successes were repeated.Within two weeks over twenty-eight thousand persons visited the exhibition.
Other cities now clamored for a sight of the pictures, and it was finally decided to end the exhibitions by a visit to Chicago.The success here exceeded that in any of the other cities.The banquet-hall of the Auditorium Hotel had been engaged; over two thousand persons were continually in a waiting-line outside, and within a week nearly thirty thousand persons pushed and jostled themselves into the gallery.Over eight thousand persons in all had viewed the pictures in the four cities.
The exhibition was immediately followed by the publication of a portfolio of the ten pictures that had proved the greatest favorites.
These were printed on plate-paper and the portfolio was offered by Bok to his readers for one dollar.The first thousand sets were exhausted within a fortnight.A second thousand were printed, and these were quickly sold out.
Bok's next enterprise was to get his pictures into the homes of the country on a larger scale; he determined to work through the churches.
