Rural Delivery (Where the Mail Goes, Cream of Wheat Goes)

Cream of Wheat: as American as apple pie. That was the message of the innovative ad campaign for which this artwork was made. The Cream of Wheat company hired well-known artists to create paintings showing the breakfast cereal and its box as part of the fabric of American life. N. C. Wyeth, a celebrated American painter and illustrator, was a spirited interpreter of Western frontier life—fitting for someone depicting a product made in Grand Forks, North Dakota. From 1902 to 1926, the company commissioned over four hundred original works of art that appeared in full-page ads in leading magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post.