?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY (1872-1952)
GEE!! I WISH I WERE A MAN / I'D JOIN THE NAVY, NAVAL RESERVE OR COAST GUARD. 1918.
40x26 inches, 101 1/2x66 cm. Condition B-: extensive repaired tears from edges, into central image; staining along repaired tear in upper image and along tape stains. Framed.
A pretty sailor, the wind blowing her uniform, is staring longingly at her desired destiny. The image is a classic, sophisticated appeal for all the maritime branches of the service in which the implicit sexual innuendo is palpable and persuasive. Christy successfully used fetching women in most of his war posters, declaring "that his uniformed models represented the all-American girl a soldier dreams of coming home to, wholesome, outdoorsy, alluring" (Meehan cat. 15). He must have hit a nerve, as these images succeeded in seducing many men into the service. Two separate versions of this poster exist (see next lot). Rawls p. 80, Theofiles p. 46, Weill 216, Darracott 5 (var), Rickards 32 (var), Borkan p. 24, War Posters p. 86.
