?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
REGINALD (REX) JOHN WHISTLER (1905-1944) THE TATE GALLERY, 1928. 40x24 3/4 inches, 101 1/2x63 cm. Haycock Photochrom, London. Condition A- / B+: minor creases, skinning, light foxing and minor restoration in margins; unobtrusive horizontal crease in text. Rex Whistler was a shining artistic talent who flared brightly and left a large body of work behind before he died young, at the age of 39 in the Second World War. He was a muralist, a landscape and portrait painter, illustrator, ballet and theatrical production designer and a poster designer. One of his murals, the Arcadian and whimsical The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats, was painted directly on the wall of the London's Tate Gallery restaurant in 1927 and can still be seen there today. Fresh off of that commission, the young artist then turned his inimitable talents toward advertising the museum itself, in a poster replete with amusing, incongruous, allegorical images. It is a whimsical and entertaining pastiche, "with the two ladies taking tea apparently in the restaurant itself as an extra trompe l'oeil touch" (Underground p. 49). Self-referentially, a note pinned to the side of the horse-drawn carriage bears the title of his mural, and above the pediment of the archway reads his name and the year in Roman numerals. Underground p. 49, Poster Art 150 p. 78.
