He selected the fifty best pictures, made them into a set and offered first a hundred sets to selected schools, which were at once taken.Then he offered two hundred and fifty sets to churches to sell at their fairs.The managers were to promise to erect a Ladies' Home Journal booth (which Bok knew, of course, would be most effective advertising), and the pictures were to sell at twenty-five and fifty cents each, with some at a dollar each.The set was offered to the churches for five dollars: the actual cost of reproduction and expressage.On the day after the publication of the magazine containing the offer, enough telegraphic orders were received to absorb the entire edition.A second edition was immediately printed; and finally ten editions, four thousand sets in all, were absorbed before the demand was filled.By this method, two hundred thousand pictures had been introduced into American homes, and over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in money had been raised by the churches as their portion.
But all this was simply to lead up to the realization of Bok's cherished dream: the reproduction, in enormous numbers, of the greatest pictures in the world in their original colors.The plan, however, was not for the moment feasible: the cost of the four-color process was at that time prohibitive, and Bok had to abandon it.But he never lost sight of it.
He knew the hour would come when he could carry it out, and he bided his time.
It was not until years later that his opportunity came, when he immediately made up his mind to seize it.The magazine had installed a battery of four-color presses; the color-work in the periodical was attracting universal attention, and after all stages of experimentation had been passed, Bok decided to make his dream a reality.He sought the co-operation of the owners of the greatest private art galleries in the country: J.Pierpont Morgan, Henry C.Frick, Joseph E.Widener, George W.Elkins, John G.Johnson, Charles P.Taft, Mrs.John L.Gardner, Charles L.Freer, Mrs.Havemeyer, and the owners of the Benjamin Altman Collection, and sought permission to reproduce their greatest paintings.
Although each felt doubtful of the ability of any process adequately to reproduce their masterpieces, the owners heartily co-operated with Bok.
But Bok's co-editors discouraged his plan, since it would involve endless labor, the exclusive services of a corps of photographers and engravers, and the employment of the most careful pressmen available in the United States.The editor realized that the obstacles were numerous and that the expense would be enormous; but he felt sure that the American public was ready for his idea.And early in 1912 he announced his series and began its publication.
The most wonderful Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Hobbema, Van Dyck, Raphael, Frans Hals, Romney, Gainsborough, Whistler, Corot, Mauve, Vermeer, Fragonard, Botticelli, and Titian reproductions followed in such rapid succession as fairly to daze the magazine readers.Four pictures were given in each number, and the faithfulness of the reproductions astonished even their owners.The success of the series was beyond Bok's own best hopes.He was printing and selling one and three-quarter million copies of each issue of his magazine; and before he was through he had presented to American homes throughout the breadth of the country over seventy million reproductions of forty separate master-pieces of art.
The dream of years had come true.
Bok had begun with the exterior of the small American house and made an impression upon it; he had brought the love of flowers into the hearts of thousands of small householders who had never thought they could have an artistic garden within a small area; he had changed the lines of furniture, and he had put better art on the walls of these homes.He had conceived a full-rounded scheme, and he had carried it out.
It was a peculiar satisfaction to Bok that Theodore Roosevelt once summed up this piece of work in these words: "Bok is the only man I ever heard of who changed, for the better, the architecture of an entire nation, and he did it so quickly and yet so effectively that we didn't know it was begun before it was finished.That is a mighty big job for one man to have done."
