?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY (1873-1952) GEE!! I WISH I WERE A MAN I'D JOIN THE NAVY. 1918. 41x26 inches, 104x68 cm. Condition B+: repaired tears and creases in margins and image; overpainting and restoration in margins. 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, the other, against a white background, has a narrower focus, seeking recruits for just the Navy, with a more blatant challenge to the public's masculinity, "Be a Man and Do It!" Theofiles 46, Rawls p. 80, Weill 216, Borkan p. 24, Darracott 5 (var), Rickards 32 (var).
