?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
FRED SPEAR ENLIST. 1915. 32x23 inches. Sackett & Wilhelms Co., New York. Condition B: repaired tear through top margin into image; extensive overpainting in bottom half of image and around text. "Without a doubt the rarest and most elusive of war posters produced in the United States" (Theofiles p. 21). Published in June 1915 in response to the sinking of the Lusitania which claimed 128 American lives, Spear's poster chillingly, hauntingly and poignantly stirs our emotions by showing us the callous destruction of pure innocence. "Like the occasion that produced it [the poster] was unforgettable" (Rickards p. 22). Paret 34, Darracott 43, Rawls p. 68, Theofiles 8 (var), IWM p. 53.
