"Man's Best Friend"

Joseph Francis Kernan was a magazine illustrator nicknamed "the poor man's Norman Rockwell." He was born in 1878 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He paid for his studies in Boston at the Eric Pape School of Art, where he later taught for two years, by playing professional baseball. Kernan favored outdoor scenes of sports, fishing, hunting and dogs. One of his paintings of an English Setter is in the art collection of the DeCoverly Kennels. Kernan's paintings appeared on the covers of magazines including Collier's, Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, The Country Gentleman, Capper's Farmer, The Elks, Outdoor Life, and the Associated Sunday Magazines. His work was also commissioned for calendars and advertisers such as International Harvester, Fisk Tires, and Pratt & Lambert Varnishes, for which he painted an ad in 1926 of two boys by a Christmas tree on a highly polished floor.