This beautiful reproduction poster has been re-mastered from an original 1950s advertising poster for the Santa Fe Railroad’s service to the Southwest, painted by renowned Southwest illustrator Hernando G. Villa.
The vibrant colors and detail of this classic image have been painstakingly brought back to life to preserve a great piece of history.
The high-resolution image is printed on heavy archival photo paper, on a large-format, professional giclée process printer. The poster is shipped in a rigid cardboard tube, and is ready for framing.
The 13"x19" and 24”x36” formats are excellent image sizes that look great as a stand-alone piece of art, or as a grouped visual statement. These posters require no cutting, trimming, or custom framing, and a wide variety of these frames are readily available at your local craft or hobby retailer, and online. The 24”x36” poster has a 1” white border.
A great vintage print for your home, shop, or business!
HISTORY OF THE SANTA FE RAILROAD & ARTIST HERNANDO G. VILLA
SANTA FE RAILROAD
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (reporting mark ATSF), often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States, named after the cities and towns of Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. Chartered in February 1859, the railroad reached the Kansas–Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farmland from the land grants that it was awarded by Congress. Despite the namesake, its mainline did not directly serve Santa Fe, due to the mountainous terrain, the metropolitan city of Albuquerque instead served New Mexico and the Santa Fe area.
The Santa Fe was a pioneer in intermodal freight transport, an enterprise that (at one time or another) included a tugboat fleet and an airline, the short-lived Santa Fe Skyway. Its bus line extended passenger transportation to areas not accessible by rail, and ferryboats on the San Francisco Bay allowed travelers to complete their westward journeys to the Pacific Ocean. The AT&SF was the subject of a popular song, Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer's "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", written for the film, The Harvey Girls (1946).
The railroad officially ceased operations on December 31, 1996, when it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.
HERNANDO G. VILLA
Hernando Gonzalo Villa was a renowned muralist and illustrator, born in Los Angeles, California, on Oct. 1, 1881. His family moved to Los Angeles from Baja California in 1846, when this section of California area was a still part of Mexico. His mother was an amateur singer, and his father an artist with a studio on the Plaza in Los Angeles. Villa studied locally under Louise Garden-MacLeod at the Los Angeles School of Art & Design in 1905, and he later travelled to Germany to further his studies.
Villa took a teaching post at the School of Art & Design while developing a studio and doing illustrations for local publications such as the Pasadena Daily News, Town Talk, and The West Coast Magazine. He became one of the best-known artists who were regularly commissioned by the Santa Fe Railroad to create classic Western images for their travel advertisements.
Hernando Gonzalo Villa died in Los Angeles on May 7, 1952.
