?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
HOWARD CHANLDER CHRISTY GEE!! I WISH I WERE A MAN. 1917. 40 1/2x26 1/2 inches. (103 x 67 cm.) Condition B / B+: restored loss in left margin; wrinkles, creases and abrasions in image; discoloration in top margin. Framed. The rarer of two posters by Christy featuring this particular beauty. The other, with a tan background, pushes for service in the Naval Reserve or Coast Guard. This one 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!" Christy, who successfully used his fetching women in many of his war posters, declared, "that his uniformed models represented the all American girl a soldier dreams of coming home to, wholesome, outdoorsy, alluring" (Meehan cat. 15). This classic wartime poster appealed to the American public on many levels, helping to rally "an unenthusiastic populace to support a "dubious European adventure" as well as "solidify the nation's resolve to sustain a military-industrial effort of unprecedented scale" (American Style p. 102). Darracott 5, Rickards 32, Power of The Poster 97.
