It’s auctions a-go-go this week. And the next on our list is yet another tranche of World War Two posters for Wallis and Wallis down in darkest Sussex, to be sold on Tuesday.
I’m rather reluctant to deal with what’s on offer this time round (61 lots, a good hundred posters at a guess) because the whole set up makes my head ache. It’s not just the fact that they’ve listed the posters as being either A3 or A1, when they surely must be in Imperial measurements.
Even more frustratingly, only eleven of the posters are actually illustrated, and those seem to have been chosen by sticking pins in the catalogue at random. World War I recruiting poster in Welsh, anyone?
Independence calls for the bravest man, apparently.
Or then this,
which has been illustrated in preference to a Dame Laura Knight poster for “War Pictures by British Artists. National Gallery Trafalgar Square”. Apparently it’s an image of a barrage balloon, but I can’t find it anywhere and would love to have seen it.
One or two classics have been illustrated.
Along with this one, which I’ve never seen before but rather like.
It would have been nice to have known the artist, or whatever other information is in that small print, but of course they’re not telling.
Plenty more other gems are almost certainly lurking in the catalogue, but I simply don’t have the whole day or more that it would take me to try and track down every single poster they mention. This one is definitely on offer.
As are a whole heap of fuel economy Bateman posters (at least eleven, spread seemingly at random among six different lots), along with a Fougasse on the same theme.
There are plenty of other fuel economy posters in there too; not all, however, are classics.
There are also two more lots of the Beverley Pick ATS recruiting posters which were pointed out to me in the last auction.
I’d like to be able to tell you what those fetched in the last sale, but, frustratingly, the Wallis and Wallis website doesn’t even have results on it so I can’t.
I’ll post about Pick again one of these days, as I’ve dug out more of his/her war posters, and they’re all good. And if anyone has any more information about their work in the meantime, I’d love to know.