Happy New Year card with man burning brush, circa 1910

About this postcard

A New Year greeting built around a rustic vignette: a man in a straw hat, white shirt, and red vest uses a long-handled rake or hoe to tend a smoking brush fire beside a pond or stream. Tall pines rise behind him, with yellow-and-red flowers in the foreground. The scene is a generic pastoral subject rather than a specific place, the kind of outdoor genre imagery that early twentieth-century holiday cards often paired with seasonal wishes. Burning brush was a familiar rural chore; here it becomes a calm pastoral scene. The greeting appears in flowing script below the picture.