?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
JOHN GILROY (1898-1985)
GUINNESS FOR STRENGTH. 1934.
30x39¾ inches, 76¼x101 cm. Sanders Phillips & Co Ltd., London. Condition A: minor abrasions in image.
"Advertising of Guinness began on a national scale in 1929, through the advertising agency S.H. Benson. The collaboration between the copy-writer R.A. Bevan (son of the painter Robert Bevan), the art director Dicky Richards, and the artist John Gilroy, resulted in some of the most memorable posters ever produced. During Gilroy's long association with Arthur Guinness Son & Co. Ltd., he invented the famous Guinness menagerie of toucans, seals, ostriches, camels, giraffes, etc. – based on studies he made at the zoo. The campaigns also sought to associate Guinness with strength, so many of Gilroy's designs – like this one of a man carrying a girder single-handed – show prodigious feats of strength. Humour, too, played an important part. Slogans like ‘Guinness is Good for You' and ‘My Goodness My Guinness' became popular catchphrases" (collections.vam.ac.uk). This image (also in a vertical format) was voted first prize at a British Trade Fair in Copenhagen by 200 members of the Danish Advertising Association. V&A E.8-1973.
