Aug 02, 2017 - Sale 2453

Sale 2453 - Lot 86

Price Realized: $ 469
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
DESIGNER UNKNOWN WHO'S ABSENT? / IS IT YOU? 1915.
29 1/4x19 3/4 inches, 74 1/4x50 1/4 cm. Andrew Reid & Co., Ltd., Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Condition B+ / A-: time-staining in upper and lower image; minor creases at edges and along unobtrusive vertical and horizontal folds; pencil notation in lower left corner. Paper.
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.