?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
DESIGNER UNKNOWN
WHO'S ABSENT? / IS IT YOU? 1915.
29x19 3/4 inches, 73 1/2x50 cm. Andrew Reid & Co., Ltd., Newcastle-on-Tyne. Condition A- / B+: expertly-repaired tears at top left, slightly into image; creases and restoration in margins. Framed.
John Bull, in his Union Jack vest, is standing in front of a line of khaki-clad soldiers and a burning building, pointing towards the public with a reproachful question. The most famous of the "pointing" recruitment posters is James Montgomery Flagg's I Want You (1917), which was based on Alfred Leete's poster, Lord Kitchener (1914). This image falls chronologically between the two. If British World War I posters failed to have all of the emotive power and strength of their American and European counterparts, it is because by and large they were designed by printers, and not by artists. Paret 67, Rickards 11.
