Sit for Your Cover
The CoversSit for Your CoverThe LedgerAboutQuestions
Eleven Plinths, each smaller than the last, down one long boardroom table, every right hand raised to vote yes, while shareholders peer through the keyhole of the door.

Vol. I · No. 1 · The centre spread

The tycoon wins every cover

Canvas from $1,800 · Paper proof $650 · Twenty-five of each

Sit for Your Cover
The Plinth WeeklyNew York, 12 October 2026
Money is the funniest subject in painting, and the people who have the most of it know the joke best.

Erasmus Plinth owns a railroad, a newspaper, a bank, a shipping line and the committee investigating all four. He never existed, and he has never lost.

Ten covers of his weekly hang here, drawn the way Puck drew the trusts in the 1880s: his belly a perfect circle, his hands like shovels, his head a pin on top. Each cover is printed on canvas twenty-five times and no more. Under every picture runs its caption, and the caption is the title.

See the Ten Covers
The sittingTwo manners

The magnate on the cover can be you

Send one photograph and write the line that runs beneath it. You keep your own face; the coat, the scene and the caricature are Plinth’s.

Tobias, a sitter we invented, as the magnate on a chromolithograph cover: his own face under a stovepipe hat, a plum waistcoat stretched over a belly drawn as a perfect circle, one enormous hand raised, standing on a plinth before a steamship, a train and an applauding crowd.

Cover, 1889

from $1,250

Pen and crosshatch under four flat stones, your caption set in type below. You keep your own face; the circle belly and the shovel hands are Plinth’s joke, and on this cover you wear them.

Ada, a sitter we invented, painted full length in the manner of an 1890s society portrait: a black frock coat and plum waistcoat, one hand on a gilt chair beside a tall window.

Society Oil, 1895

from $1,250

After the society painters of the 1890s: full length, at ease in a drawing room, your caption on the plate beneath.

Ada and Tobias are people we made up to show the two manners. A sitting is numbered outside the twenty-five, and costs the edition price at the same size plus $600.

Sit for Your Cover

Vol. ITen covers · twenty-five copies each

See the Ten Covers

Cover 01 / 10

Eleven Plinths, each smaller than the last, down one long boardroom table, every right hand raised to vote yes, while shareholders peer through the keyhole of the door.No. 1 · Edition of 25The Bosses of the BoardroomMotion carried, by a majority of onePlinth, round as a barrel in a plum waistcoat, lowers a lifeboat from his steam yacht with one huge hand; the lifeboat is a smaller steam yacht, carrying a smaller lifeboat of its own.No. 2 · Edition of 25LifeboatWomen, children and the second yacht firstPlinth fills a plum armchair, reading a broadsheet whose every column carries his own portrait, while four small pressmen in aprons look up at him.No. 3 · Edition of 25The Free PressEvery headline agrees with the ownerPlinth cuts a red ribbon with brass scissors on the steps of a marble hall carved with his own bust, as clerks carry ledgers in by a side door and a crowd applauds.No. 4 · Edition of 25PhilanthropyHe gave it all away, to himselfPlinth in the witness chair raises one enormous hand to take the oath, while seven small committee men on the bench behind him clutch envelopes to their chests and smile.No. 5 · Edition of 25The CommitteeThe committee finds the witness crediblePlinth waters one small flower in a brass pot on the doorstep of a seaside mansion with towers, forty chimneys and a blue front door.No. 6 · Edition of 25A Modest RetirementHe means to live simply, in forty roomsPlinth sits cross-legged at the centre of a ring-shaped board game whose every square holds his top hat, holding up the dice, while four small players look on.No. 7 · Edition of 25A Board Game of His OwnEvery square is his, and so is the dicePlinth stands on his portico holding up a brass ticket punch, as every railway line across the plain behind him runs to his front steps.No. 8 · Edition of 25The RailroadAll tracks lead to one stationPlinth on a stone judges’ stand with a brass megaphone in one huge hand and a stopwatch in the other, as six small yachts with plum sails race behind him, each steered by a small Plinth.No. 9 · Edition of 25The RegattaA close finish, between his first and secondPlinth pulls a red cloth from a brass statue of himself on a stone plinth, while a brass band plays and a crowd looks up.No. 10 · Edition of 25Our FounderUnveiled by the subject, at his own expense
The heritagePuck, 1877 to 1918

Drawn after Keppler’s weekly

In 1877 Joseph Keppler, an Austrian lithographer, began printing Puck in colour from limestone, and for forty years its covers and centre spreads drew the trusts, the railroads and the men who owned them larger than life.

Bernhard Gillam, Frederick Opper and Friedrich Graetz drew beside him. Their plates are in the Library of Congress, and the four below are in the public domain. Plinth is our own invention, made for now: the covers borrow the manner and none of the faces.

A centre spread from a bound volume of Puck: the founder bursts back into a crowded editorial office, papers flying, his staff and his cartoon characters crowding to greet him.
Joseph Keppler, 1883The return of the “prodigal father” at the “Puck” office, drawn by himself. Public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LCCN 92520934.
A Puck front cover under its ornate masthead: a top-hatted millionaire strides off clutching a sack while a small figure hangs on to his coat tails.
Frederick Burr Opper, 29 October 1884Our merciless millionaire. Public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LCCN 2011661840.
A centre spread: an armoured knight riding a gilded locomotive charges a working man on a thin horse, before grandstands packed with spectators.
Friedrich Graetz, 1883The tournament of today: a set-to between labor and monopoly. Public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LCCN 2012645501.
A centre spread: an old millionaire sits wrapped in a blanket over a plain supper while maids and footmen wait on him in a rich drawing room.
Samuel D. Ehrhart, 1900Pity the poor millionaire. Public domain in the United States (published before 1931). Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LCCN 2010651236.
How a sitting goesAbout two minutes

Sit for Your Cover

  1. Consent first

    Two boxes before any upload: the photograph is of you or you hold the sitter’s written permission, and the sitter is an adult.

  2. One photograph

    Face and shoulders, one person, ordinary clothes. We read it, paint from it, and never store it.

  3. Your caption

    Up to sixty characters, set in type under the picture. It may tease the sitter; it may not name a real person.

  4. Approve, then print

    See the cover first, choose a size, and the lab prints it as a giclée on canvas or paper. Delivery in the United States is included.

Sit for Your Cover

The ledgerEvery copy, numbered

Read the Ledger

Each canvas is numbered in the order it was paid for, one to twenty-five, and struck through on its cover’s page the day it sells. No names, ever. A refunded number is struck and retired, never issued again, so a cover can close at fewer than twenty-five. The paper proof stays open, unnumbered.

Read the Ledger