PHILIP ZEC (1900-1983) BY NIGHT TRAIN TO SCOTLAND / LMS. 1932.
39 3/4x50 inches, 101x127 cm. McCorquodale & Co., Limited, Glasgow.
Condition B+: expertly-overpainted and partially-replaced margins; overpainting around text; expertly-repaired tears, creases and minor restoration in margins and along vertical and horizontal folds.
The Zec family fled Tsarist Russia and settled in London prior to the First World War. "At the age of thirteen, he won a scholarship to St. Martin's School of Art, and upon graduating he joined Arks Publicity, an advertising agency. He later set up his own commercial art studio working for agencies including J. Walter Thompson, when all his railway work was commissioned" (Furness vol. 7 p. 233). This exceptional nocturnal scene - with the engine's hot furnace illuminating the plume of smoke from its funnel, beneath the glowing moon - is an outlier within Zec's oeuvre. The majority of his posters were done as propaganda during World War II in an entirely different style. rare. We have found only two other copies at auction since 1990. Affiches Chemin de Fer p. 90-91.