World War 1 posters - part 1

During World War 1 the impact of the poster as a means of communication was greater than at any other time during history. The ability of poster to inspire, inform, and persuade combined with vibrant design trends in many of the participating countries to produce thousands of interesting visual works. As a valuable historical research resource, the posters provide multiple points of view for understanding this global conflict. As artistic works, the posters range in style form graphically vibrant works by well-known designers to anonymous ones. 

Library of Congress, Washington D.C. 

This is Part 1 of a 10-part series on WW1 posters:

1914 He did his duty. Will You do Yours? Field Marshal Lord Roberts was probably Britain's most famous soldier when the war broke out in 1914. He died of pneumonia at St Omer in France during a visit to Indian troops in November of that year. After lying in state in Westminster Hall, one of only two non-Royals to do so in the 20th century, the other being Winston Churchill, he was given a state funeral. Roberts had been a soldier for over 50 years and this poster appeals to recruits to follow his example of service and loyalty.

1914 He did his duty. Will YOU do YOURS?

1914 Banca Italiano di Sconto 

Enrico Lione, the name chosen by Enrico Della Leonessa (1865-1921) was an Italian painter active in a Divisionist style. He was born and died in Naples. He trained and was active for many year in Rome.

1914 Banca Italiano di Sconto
artist Enrico Lionne (1865-1921 Italy)

1914 Britain Needs You At Once

1914 Britons ( Field Marshal Lord Kitchener) "Wants You"
artist: Alfred Leete

1914 Come Along Boys and Join the Army
artist W. H. Caffyn

1916 Gute Bücher, Gute Kameraden
(Good Books, Good Comrades)
 artist Oswald Weise (Germany)

1914 Das Buch Giebt Freude und Trost
 (The book gives joy and comfort)
 artist Oswald Weise (Germany)

1914 Fikszirozzák A Feleségem!
(My Wife is Being Ogled At!)
artist Antal Weiss (Austria-Hungary)

1914 Pufi (Fatso)
artist Antal Weiss (Austria-Hungary)

1915 Kinoriport (Cinematic Reportage)
artist Antal Weiss (Austria-Hungary)

1918 Jegyezzünk Hadikölcsönt a Fabanknál!
(Subscribe to the War Loan at Fabank)
artist Antal Weiss (Austria-Hungary)

1914 Forward to Victory by Lucy Kemp Welch:

Lucy Kemp Welch

1915 Remember Scarborough, Enlist Now
artist Lucy Kemp-Welch

1914 Our Ancestors Fought For Our Freedom 
published in South Africa

1914 Red Cross artist Ludwig Hohlwein (Germany 1874-1949)

Ludwig Hohlwein (1874-1949) was born in Wiesbaden, Berchtesgaden in 1874. He was a German poster artist. He was trained and practiced as an architect until 1906 when he switched to poster design.

Hohlwein's most artistically important phase was before World War II in the years 1912-1925. A large variety of his best posters dates to this period. He developed his own distinct style with sharply defined forms, bright colours and a good portion of humour. By 1925, he had already designed 3000 different advertisements.

Note: A series on the works of Ludwig Hohlwein can be found in the index of this blog.

Ludwig Hohlwein

1914 Red Cross
artist Ludwig Hohlwein (Germany)

c1918 People's Charity for German Prisoners of War
artist Ludwig Hohlwein (Germany)

1914 Remember Belgium Enlist To-day
artist unknown (U.K.)

1914 The Only Road for an Englishman

London Underground led the way among the many private organisations which published patriotic and recruiting posters during the war. Under the inspired leadership of Frank Pick, the Underground had acquired a well deserved reputation for the outstanding quality of its peacetime travel posters and now sought to apply the same principles to designing wartime notices. In 1914 Pick actually refused to display the designs of the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee on the Tube because they were 'too bad to be hung'. Instead he commissioned Frank Brangwyn and Gerald Spenser Pryse to create high quality and memorable designs to encourage commuters to enlist. From 1916 the Underground also commissioned some of the finest artists of the day to produce decorative posters for army billets and YMCA huts as 'a reminder of home.’

1914 The Only Road for an Englishman
artist Gerald Spenser Pryse (1882–1956)

1914 The Veteran's Farewell, Enlist Now!
artist Frank Dadd (1851-1929)

Keep on sending me OXO
artist Frank Dadd

1914 There's Room for You, Enlist To-Day: William Arthur Fry (1865-1930) was an artist born in Otley, Yorkshire in 1865 who painted landscapes, portraits and seascapes.

1914 There's Room for You, Enlist To-Day
artist William Arthur Fry (1865-1936 UK)

 

Artist Sir Frank Brangwyn (1867-1956 UK):

1914 WAR To Arms Citizens of the Empire!

1915 At Neuve Chapelle.
Your Friends Need You. Be a Man

1915 Mars appeals to Vulcan. Daily Chronicle newspaper.

1915 National Fund for the Welsh Troops

c1915 Daily Mail Red Cross Fund

c1915 Daily Mail Red Cross Fund

c1915 Daily Mail Red Cross Fund

c1915 Evening New Red Cross Fund

c1915 Evening New Red Cross Fund

c1915 Evening New Red Cross Fund

c1916 The Zeppelin Raids: The Vow of Vengeance

1917 "Look After My Folks"

c1917 Back-Him-Up   Buy War Bonds

1918 Put Strength in the Final Blow
Buy War Bonds

Belgian & Allies Aid League

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1914 Your King & Country Need You
artist Lawson Wood (1878-1957)

1914 Your King & Country Need You
artist Lawson Wood

Francisco de Goya - part 10

Francisco de Goya was a Spanish artist widely considered one of the most important painters of the Romantic period. The artist took on a wide array of subject matter, including self-portraiture, fantasy scenes, landscapes, and still lifes. “Painting, like poetry, selects in the universe whatever she deems most appropriate to her ends,” he once explained. Born Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes in the town of Fuendetodos, Spain on March 30, 1746, he began studying art under the painter Jose Luzán at the age of 14. During the 1770s, Goya produced works such as The Parasol (1777), which meld the unlikely pairing of cheery Rococo aesthetics with the moody works of Diego Velázquez. 

The artist became the court painter of Charles III of Spain in 1786, and continued painting for the Spanish court until Napoleons invasion of Spain in 1808. During the Napoleonic wars, Goya’s palette significantly darkened as he produced some of his most famous works. Among these paintings are the The Second of May 1808 (1814) and The Third of May 1808 (1814), which show the terrors of war. Three years before he left his native country, Goya produced 14 paintings directly onto the plaster walls of his farmhouse. These works, collectively known as The Black Paintings (1821), depicted terrifying supernatural themes and heinous violence. 

Living in exile in Bordeaux, France, the artist died on April 16, 1828. His works went on to have a profound influence on both Édouard Manet and Pablo Picasso. Today, Goya’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Prado Museum in Madrid, and the Louvre Museum in Paris, among others.

This is part 10 of a 10-part series on the works of Francisco de Goya.

1819-23 Black Paintings, Museo del Prado, Madrid

The Black Paintings is the name given to a group of paintings by Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819 and 1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and his bleak outlook on humanity. In 1819, at the age of 72, Goya moved into a two-story house outside Madrid that was called Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man's Villa). Although the house had been named after the previous owner, who was deaf, Goya too was nearly deaf at the time as a result of an unknown illness he had suffered when he was 46. The paintings originally were painted as murals on the walls of the house, later being "hacked off" the walls and attached to canvas by owner Baron Frédéric Émile d’Erlanger. They are all now in the Museo de Prado in Madrid.

1819-23 Atropos or The Fates
oil mural painting transferred to canvas 123 x 266 cm

Atropos or The Fates detail

1819-23 Fight with Cudgels
oil on canvas 125 x 261 cm

Fight with Cudgels detail

1819-23 Judith and Holofernes
oil mural transferred to canvas 143.5 x 81.4 cm

1819-23 Man Mocked by Two Women
oil on canvas 125 x 66 cm

1819-23 Pilgrimage to the Fountain of San Isidro
oil mural painting transferred to canvas 127 x 266 cm

Pilgrimage to the Fountain of San Isidro detail

1819-23 The drowning dog
oil mural painting transferred to canvas 131.5 x 79.3 cm

1819-23 Two old men
oil mural painting transferred to canvas 146 x 66 cm

1819-23 Two old ones eating soup
oil mural painting transferred to canvas 49.3 x 83.4 cm

1820-23 A Manola: Leocadia Zorilla
oil on mural transferred to canvas 145.7 x 129.4 cm

1820-23 Asmodea
mixed method on mural transferred to canvas 127 x 263 cm

Asmodea detail

c1820-23 Saturn devouring his Son
mixed media mural transferred to canvas 143.5 x 81.4 cm

1820-23 Two old men reading
oil on gesso transferred to linen 125.3 x 65.2 cm

c1819-23 What madness to still think about marriage
brush, Indian ink, preliminary tracing in black chalk, on white laid paper 23.4 x 14.4 cm
Louvre, Paris

c1819-23 He Can No Longer at the Age of Ninety-Eight
brush and India ink 23.3 x 14.4 cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

c1819-23  Bad woman
brush, gray and black Indian ink wash, black chalk strokes, on white paper 21.5 x 14.4 cm
Louvre, Paris

1820 Tiburcio Pérez y Cuervo

Pérez’s loosely rolled up sleeves—a painterly tour de force—and relaxed expression combine with Goya’s nearly monochrome palette to create an exceptionally direct and informal portrait of the artist’s close friend, the architect Tiburcio Pérez. The year before, Goya had painted Pérez’s uncle, also an architect, in a far more regal and conventional portrait, which is today in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Pérez was responsible for the design of several institutional buildings in Madrid, including a medical school on the Calle de Atocha.

1820 Tiburcio Pérez y Cuervo (1785/86–1841), the Architect
oil on canvas 102.2 x 81.3 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1820-23 Witches' Sabbath, or the Great He-Goat
oil on mural transferred to canvas 140.5 x 435.7 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Witches' Sabbath, or the Great He-Goat detail

Witches' Sabbath, or the Great He-Goat detail

1823 Portrait of Don Ramón Satué y Allué (1765-1824)
oil on canvas 107 x 83.5 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1824 Bullfight, Suerte de Varas
oil on canvas 49.8 x 70.8 cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 

1824 Portrait of a Lady (María Martínez de Puga?)
oil on canvas 80 x 58.4 cm
The Frick Collection, New York

1824 Portrait of the Canon D. José Duaso y Latre
oil on canvas 74.5 x 59 cm
Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla, Spain

1824-25 Bull Attacked by Dogsl
lithograph on ivory wove paper 18.8 x 31.5 cm

c1824-28 Fire! Fire!
black chalk, lithographic pencil, on white-grey laid paper
18.8 x 15.1 cm
Louvre, Paris

1825 The Bulls of Bordeaux (4 images):

1825 Bullfight in a divided ring
lithographic crayon and scraper on light tan wove paper
30.4 x 41.3 cm (image)

1825 Picador caught by a Bull
lithographic crayon and scraper in black on buff wove paper
31.3 x 51.3 cm (image)

1825 Spanish Entertainment
lithographic crayon and scraper on light tan wove paper
30.1 x 40.6 cm (image)

1825 The Famous American, Mariano Ceballos
lithographic crayon and scraper on ivory wove paper
 31.1 x 40.5 cm (image)

1825-26 Modern Duel
lithographic crayon and scraper on ivory laid paper
 19 x 19.5 cm (image)

1825-26 The Andalusian Dance
lithographic crayon on ivory laid paper 24.5 x 29 cm

1825-27 Old man on a swing
etching and burnished aquatint and/or lavis on ivory paper
18.8 x 12.2 cm (plate)

c1825-28 They are Dying
black chalk, lithographic crayon, stumping, on white laid paper 18.9 x 14.4 cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

1827 Juan Bautista de Muguiro
oil on canvas 103 x 85 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1827 The Milkmaid of Bordeaux
oil on canvas 74 x 68 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid

c1894? An Officer
oil on canvas 63.2 x 48.9 cm
The Frick Collection New York City

c1915-20 The Forge
oil on canvas 181.6 x 125.1 cm

n.d. Christ in the Garden of Olives
(School og Goya)
oil on wood panel 47 x 35 cm
Louvre, Paris

n.d. Couple in a landscape
brush, sepia wash, preliminary red chalk lines, traces of black chalk, touches of grey wash, on white laid paper 20.3 x 14.2 cm
Louvre, Paris

n.d. Her devotion consoles her
(attributed to Goya)
scraper, brush, Indian ink wash, traces of black chalk, on white laid paper 25.5 x 18 cm
Louvre, Paris

n.d. Portrait of the Countess of Chincón
oil on canvas 82 x 61.7 cm
Uffizi Gallery, Florence

n.d. Scene at a Bullfight
oil on canvas 45 x 57 cm
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK

n.d. Scene at a Bullfight
oil on canvas 46 x 58 cm
© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, UK

n.d. The Widow
brush, sepia ink wash, Indian ink wash, on white laid paper
20.3 x 14.2 cm
Louvre, Paris

n.d.The same thing
brush, Indian ink wash, black chalk strokes on white laid paper 26.2 x 18.4 cm
 Louvre, Paris