During World War I, the impact of the poster as a means of communication was greater than at any other time during history. The ability of posters 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 from graphically vibrant works by well-known designers to anonymous broadsides (predominantly text).
For more information see part 1. For earlier examples see parts 1 - 5 also.
This is part 6 of a 9-part series on WW1 posters.
In 1916 Watanabe published 21 prints with Bartlett. Many were from sketches that the artist had made in India. A series of 6 prints show Japanese landscapes and town views. These look somewhat like modernised Hiroshige designs.In 1917 Charles William Bartlett and his wife left Japan. Their destination was North America. And from there they wanted to return to England. But their lives took an unplanned twist. The artist and his wife remained in Hawaii for the rest of their lives. Bartlett became a respected and popular artist with successful exhibitions at Hawaiian and New York galleries.
Julius Klinger (1876-1942) was an Austrian painter, draftsman, illustrator, commercial graphic artist, typographer and writer. He studied at the Technologisches Gewerbemuseum in Vienna. Klinger was born in Dornbach near Vienna. In 1895, he found his first employment with the Vienna fashion magazine Wiener Mode. Here he made acquaintance with Koloman Moser, who later would be his teacher; Moser recommended him to the Meggendorfer-Blätter.
Julius Ussy Engelhard (1883-1964) was an Indonesian visual artist who was born in 1883. Several works by the artist have been sold at auction, including 'Hirte mit Schafen an Hochgebirgssee' sold at Neumeister 'Fine Art' in 2017. The artist died in 1964
Notes on Sidney H. Riesenberg in Part 5.
Notes on Lucien Hector Jonas in Part 1.
For more information see part 1. For earlier examples see parts 1 - 5 also.
This is part 6 of a 9-part series on WW1 posters.
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| 1917 Your Country Needs You Now by Josef Pierre Nuyttens ( USA ) colour lithograph 135 x 104 cm |
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| 1917 Zeichnet 4. Kriegsanleihe by Heinrich Lefler ( Austria ) colour lithograph 126 x 95 cm |
Heinrich Lefler (1863–1919) was an Austrian painter, graphic artist and stage designer associated with the Golden Age of Illustration – particularly linked with the Jugendstil movement (the German variant of Art Nouveau).
Born in Vienna in 1863, Heinrich Lefler attended the Academies of Fine Arts in Vienna and Munich, going on to become a member of the “Society of Visual artists – Kuenstlerhaus”. The established independent painter and graphic artist was in fact, a pioneer of modern Austrian graphic design. His numerous commercial designs included posters, advertisements, and catalogues. By 1897 he’d created one of the earliest Austrian art nouveau posters for “Auerlicht,”a manufacturer of incandescent lamp mantles. (See variant below)
During his career, Lefler also illustrated many books for the booming turn-of-the-century publishing scene. Finally, in 1900, Gustav Mahler appointed Heinrich Lefler to be the Official designer of the Vienna Court Opera. That same year, Lefler co-founded the “Hagenbund” art movement with his brother-in-law Joseph Urban, together with some other artists. “Hagenbund’s” first Viennese exhibition took place two years later in a hall Lefler had especially adapted for the event in Zedlitzgasse. He’d also designed the official exhibition poster.
“Hagenbund’s” founding fathers, Lefler and Urban, also collaborated frequently on other applied arts projects from graphic design to interior decoration. After being elected “Hagenbund’s” president in 1902, Lefler went on to work with bank notes specialist Rudolf Rössler to design the Austrian 1000 Kronen bank note.
A year later, in 1903, Heinrich Lefler left the Vienna Court Opera to go to the Vienna Court Theatre, or Hof-Burgtheater, where he was responsible for artistic design until 1910. During those years he also taught at the Vienna Academy. However, after hefty debate regarding designs he created with Joseph Urban for the 1908 Emperor-Jubilee-procession, Lefler resigned from all public functions, both as a teacher and at the Burgtheater, and from then on only worked on a private basis. Left weakened after suffering a stroke in late 1918, Heinrich Lefler died in Vienna in 1919.
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| c1897 Auer'A Swiatlo by Henrich Lefler |
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| 1917 Zeichnet 7. Kriegsanleihe by Alfred Offner ( Austria ) colour lithograph 63 x 95 cm Alfred Offner ( 1879 – 1947 ) |
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| 1917 Zeichnet 7. Kriegsanleihe by Thomas Fasche ( Austria ) colour lithograph 126 x 95 cm |
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| 1917 Zeichnet 8. Kriegsanleihe by Karl Sterrer ( Austria ) colour lithograph 95 x 63 cm |
Karl Sterrer (1885-1972) was an Austrian painter and engraver. He was the son of the sculptor Carl Sterrer. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna under Alois Delug and Christian Griepenkerl. Equally adept at both landscapes and portraits, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1908. This was followed by many more awards, including the Reichel Prize in 1919.
Around 1910 Sterrer was one of the first Austrian artists to be intrigued by the beginnings of German Expressionism. Building upon the deep, dark lines of drypointing, Sterrer began to cut his landscape compositions to their essentials. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Sterrer worked and travelled extensively in Germany and Austria.
In 1921, he accepted the post of Professor of Fine Arts at the Vienna Academy. Today, examples of Sterrer's original prints and paintings are housed in the collections of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, the Dresden Gallery and the Austrian Academy in Vienna.
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| 1917 Zeichnet die sechste Kriegsanleihe, 1914-1917 by Maximilian Lenz ( Austria ) colour lithograph 76 x 55 cm Maximilian Lenz was an Austrian painter, graphic artist and sculptor. A founding member of the Vienna Secession; during his career's most important period, he was a Symbolist, but later his work became increasingly naturalistic. He worked in a variety of media, including oils, watercolours, lithography and metal reliefs. He studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In 1897, Lenz left the Künstlerhaus to become a founding member of the Vienna Secession, and his work for the group's first exhibition was hailed as "outstanding". His 1899 painting “A World” (Eine Welt), also translated as A Day Dream), draws on the time's prevailing currents, including dreamlike and fantastic imagery painted in intense colour. It was shown at the Fourth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession in spring 1899, and received critical praise for its "graceful charm and dreamy yet sparkling beauty" and its mood of "pure grace and musical euphony". The painting was also shown in winter 1911-12 with the Munich Secession (see below). Having shown his picture On the Way to Wonderland at the Tenth Exhibition of the Vienna Secession in 1901 and the Thirteenth Exhibition in spring 1902, at the Secession's Fourteenth Exhibition in the summer of that year (the 'Beethoven exhibition') he showed a number of reliefs in various metals, which were noted as beautiful and inventive. Some of his copper panels were also shown at the 1904 World's Fair in St Louis. However, a foray, together with various other Secession artists, into woodcuts for the Beethoven exhibition catalogue was panned as "rough" and more like the work of an amateur than an experienced painter, but was also found to be enthusiastic not totally without merit. With Gustav Klimt, Lenz visited Ravenna in the winter of 1903-04, where they saw and were influenced by the golden mosaics. At the Twentieth Exhibition in 1904, Lenz's painting Iduna's Apples, was considered to be one of the highlights amongst the paintings shown, along with the works of Klimt and Rudolf von Alt. Lenz served on the Secession's official committee in 1905 and again in 1906. He also exhibited with the Secession in spring 1906. In 1907; in 1908 at the Twenty-Ninth Exhibition. He left the Secession and rejoined the Künstlerhaus in 1938. |
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| 1899 A World by Maximilian Lenz oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| 1917 Zeichnet die siebente Kriegsanleihe by Maximillian Lenz ( Austria ) colour lithograph 95 x 51 cm |
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| 1917 Zeichnet Kriegsanleihe by Karl Sigrist ( Austria ) colour lithograph 71 x 47 cm |
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| 1917-18 U.S Army Air Service Learn-Earn colour lithograph |
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| 1917-20 Put Fighting Blood in Your Business by Dan Smith ( USA ) photomechanical print |
Dan Smith (1865-1934 studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Smith is best known for his western subjects and was probably tackling those subjects at the same time as Remington and Russell, a generation before Wyeth and Tenney Johnson.
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| 1917-20 U.S. Army Signal Corps ( USA ) colour lithograph |
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| 1917-1918 Be a Trained Nurse ( USA ) colour lithograph 76 x 54 cm |
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| 1917c Five Thousand by June by Carl Rakeman ( USA ) colour lithograph |
Carl Rakeman (1878–1965) was an American artist for the Bureau of Public Roads during the middle of the 19th century. During his career for the American government he completed 109 paintings depicting historic transportation methods in the United States. Rakeman was a native Washingtonian (DC) born to German-American artist Joseph Rakeman. He was educated at the Corcoran Art School and art academies in Düsseldorf, Munich, and Paris. He was an etcher and a painter in watercolors, oils, and frescoes. He also worked in the field of mural decoration.
In 1921, Rakeman joined the Department of Agriculture, which at that time housed the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR). During his career BPR, he painted exhibits for the Good Roads meetings, state fairs, and expositions such as the Brazilian Exposition (1922), the Century of Progress in Chicago (1933), an Overseas Exposition in Paris, the Golden Gate Exposition in San Francisco (1939) and the New York World's Fair (1940). In addition, he completed the series of 109 paintings depicting historic American roads, trails, and highways.
Among his most notable works are his murals in Washington, particularly the one adjoining the Senate Committee Room on Appropriations in the Capitol. The lunettes over the windows, doorway, and fireplace were not decorated, and this work was placed in the hands of Rakeman. In each lunette he placed the portrait of a famous American general: George Washington, Anthony Wayne, Joseph Warren, and Horatio Gates. He framed each with an oval laurel wreath. Flanking each of the portraits are flags of the Colonial period, draped over contemporary helmets and arms. It is the only design in the Capitol showing the Colonial flags.
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| 1917c Join the Army Air Service, be an American Eagle! by Charles Livingston Bull ( USA ) colour lithograph |
Notes on Charles Livingston Bull in part 4.
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| 1917c SERVICE Surgical Dressings for War Relief ( USA ) colour lithograph 107 x 70 cm |
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| 1917c The Navy is Calling Enlist Now by L.N. Britton ( USA ) colour lithograph |
L.N. Britton: American 1858–1934
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| 1917c Über Alles ( USA ) Barron Collier Patriotic Series No.2 Barron Gift Collier (1873-1939) was an American advertising entrepreneur who became the largest landowner and developer in the U.S. state of Florida, as well as the owner of a chain of hotels, bus lines, several banks, and newspapers, and of a telephone company and a steamship line. More of the Patriotic Series:       |
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| 1918 2nd war fund - May 6-11 by Charles William Bartlett ( USA ) colour lithograph 107 x 70 cm |
Charles William Bartlett was born in 1860 in Bridgeport, Dorset. After a short excursion into the field of metallurgy, he studied painting and etching at the Royal Academy in London and later at a private art school in Paris. In 1913 Bartlett began a journey that was planned as a trip around the world. When he and his wife left England, they had no idea that they would never see England again. They visited Pakistan, India, Ceylon, Indonesia and China. Bartlett created watercolors and sketches on this tour. Centre of his artistic attention were such landmark attractions like the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.
In 1915 the artist and his wife arrived in Japan. In Tokyo they met the Austrian artist Fritz Capelari who one day took them to the print shop of Watanabe Shozaburo. Watanabe was the driving force of the Shin Hanga art movement and was always looking for good artists who were capable of making print designs for him that his artisans - carvers and printers - then transformed into a modernized form of the old traditional Japanese woodblock. The style of Charles Bartlett's watercolours with colourful, large flat areas was much in line with Watanabe's idea of a modern Japanese print.In 1916 Watanabe published 21 prints with Bartlett. Many were from sketches that the artist had made in India. A series of 6 prints show Japanese landscapes and town views. These look somewhat like modernised Hiroshige designs.In 1917 Charles William Bartlett and his wife left Japan. Their destination was North America. And from there they wanted to return to England. But their lives took an unplanned twist. The artist and his wife remained in Hawaii for the rest of their lives. Bartlett became a respected and popular artist with successful exhibitions at Hawaiian and New York galleries.
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| 1918 4e Emprunt de la Défense Nationale by Abel Faivre ( France ) colour lithograph 80 x 130 cm Notes on Abel Faivre in Part 2. |
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| 1918 8. Kriegsanleihe by Julius Klinger ( Austria ) colour lithograph 95 x 63 cm |
1896 saw him moving to Munich where he worked as an illustrator for the Meggendorfer-Blätterand others. From 1897 to 1902 he was a collaborator to the eponymous Jugendstil magazine Die Jugend. In 1897 he relocated to Berlin, where he worked extensively as a commercial graphic artist until 1915. Together with the printing house Hollerbaum und Schmidt, he developed a new fashion of functional poster design that soon gained him international reputation.In 1912 he designed the poster for the Rund um Berlin air show in Johannisthal. In Berlin he also contributed to Das kleine Witzblatt, Lustige Blätter and Das Narrenschiff humorous magazines.
Beginning in 1918, Klinger designed a comprehensive and noted campaign promoting the "Tabu" company's cigarette rolling paper, that was advertised all over Vienna in 1918-19 (see below).
Being of Jewish descent, he suffered from National Socialist harassment. According to Viennese police records, he was registered as moved to Minsk on 2 June 1942, i.e. deported. He is thought to have died the same year, by execution or otherwise.
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| 1919 Tabu by Julius Klinger |
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| 1918 8. Kriegsanleihe by Kurt Libesny ( Austria ) colour lithograph 94 x 63 cm |
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| 1918 8. Kriegsanleihe by Walter Kühn (Switzerland ) colour lithograph 95 x 63 cm |
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| 1918 1778-1783 America owes France the most unalterable gratitude by Lucien Hector Jonas ( France ) colour lithograph 81 x 59 cm |
Notes on Lucien Hector Jonas in Part 1.
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| 1918 "Hey Fellows!" Your money brings the book we need when we want it by John E. Sheridan ( USA ) colour lithograph 76 x 51 cm |
John Emmet Sheridan ( 1877 Tomah, Wisconsin – 1948 New York ) was an illustrator well known in his lifetime for his cover art for The Saturday Evening Post, his illustrations for Collier's Weekly and Ladies' Home Journal, and his commercial advertisements. He is "credited with the idea of using posters to advertise college sports." Sheridan was a member of the Dutch Treat Club, and a frequent contributor to the programme of their annual banquet and show, and was an instructor at New York's School of Visual Arts at the time of its founding.
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| 1918 "Ammunition!" And remember - Bonds buy Bullets! by Vincent Lyne ( USA ) colour lithograph 76 x 51 cm |
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| 1918 Ausstellung von Plakaten für die 8. Kriegsanleihe entworfen von Heeresangehörigen by P. Hasse ( Germany ) colour lithograph 71 x 47 cm |
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| 1918 Better than the V.C. by Harry Furniss ( UK ) colour lithograph 75 x 50 cm |
Harry (aka Henry) Furniss (1854-1925) was a highly inventive and energetic cartoonist and illustrator. Though he worked as Parliamentary cartoonist for Punchfor fourteen years, he was of independent spirit, and so happier developing his own projects, be it his parodic ‘Royal Academy’ or the magazine, Lika Joko. His ability to epitomise a person’s character by exaggerating mannerism or appearance made him an ideal illustrator for the work of Charles Dickens.
When the family settled in Dublin, in 1864, Furniss was educated at the city’s Wesleyan College, and then studied at the schools of the Royal Hibernian Academy. From 1876, Furniss was employed as a Special Artist for the Illustrated London News, in which capacity he tackled a range of subjects from bohemian life to proceedings in Parliament. As a result of this experience, the political journalist, Sir Henry Lucy, chose Furniss to illustrate his new Parliamentary review for Punch, a periodical that, until then (1880), had rejected Furniss’s sketches. He joined the staff in 1884, on a retainer rather than as a full-time member.
In tandem with his work as a caricaturist, Furniss developed as a book illustrator, collaborating with Lewis Carroll on the two books of Sylvia and Bruno (1889 and 1893). His distinction as an illustrator was acknowledged by commissions to illustrate complete editions of Dickens (1910) and Thackeray (1911). His own books include Confessions of a Caricaturist (1901), Harry Furniss (1903) and My Bohemian Days (1919). Ever resourceful, he then turned to cinematography, working in New York with Thomas Edison as a writer, producer and actor (1912-14), and returning to London at the outbreak of the First World War to produce a short film entitled Peace and War: Pencillings by Harry Furniss. He spent his last years in Hastings, dying there in 1925. A memorial exhibition was held at the Fine Art Society in that year. His work is represented in numerous public collections, including the National Portrait Gallery.
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| 1918 Bolschewismus bringt Krieg, Arbeitslosigkeit und Hungersnot by Julius Ussy Engelhard ( Germany ) colour lithograph 106 x 82 cm |
Julius Ussy Engelhard (1883-1964) was an Indonesian visual artist who was born in 1883. Several works by the artist have been sold at auction, including 'Hirte mit Schafen an Hochgebirgssee' sold at Neumeister 'Fine Art' in 2017. The artist died in 1964
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| 1918 Bǒh Do Krivdy Hromom A Junák Gulámi... by Vojtëch Preissig ( Czechoslovakia ) colour lithograph 91 x 64 cm |
Notes on Vojtëch Preissig in Part 3.
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| 1918 Bring in your $50, and take Home Your Bond! ( USA ) colour lithograph 77 x 58 cm |
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| 1918 Civilians by Sidney H. Riesenberg ( USA ) colour lithograph 84 x 36 cm |
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| 1918 Compagnie Algérienne Souscrire, c'est hâter son retour avec la Victoire by Lucien Hector Jonas ( France ) colour lithograph 114 x 79 cm |
Notes on Lucien Hector Jonas in Part 1.
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| 1918 Crédit Commercial de France by Lucien Hector Jonas ( France ) colour lithograph 119 x 81 cm |
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| 1918 Crédit Lyonnais Souscrivez au 4e Emprunt National by Jules Abel Faivre ( France ) colour lithograph 79 x 118 cm |
Notes on Jules Abel Faivre in Part 2.
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| 1918 Der 9te Pfeil zeichnet Kriegsanleihe by Fritz Erler ( Germany ) colour lithograph 58 x 43 cm |
Fritz Erler (1868 – 1940) was a German painter, graphic designer, and scenic designer. Although most talented as an interior designer, he is perhaps best remembered for several propaganda posters he produced during WW1. Along with Arthur Kampf, Erler was one of the official military painters for the Oberste Heeresleitung. His paintings were commissioned as war propaganda.
He was born in Frankenstein (Schlesien). Beginning in 1886 he studied under Albrecht Bräuer at the school of art in Breslau. He also attended the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1895 he moved to Munich and lived from 1918 in Holzhausen am Ammersee. His first designs date from 1893: vases, glass windows, book covers, later furniture, theatrical sets, and interior decorations. In 1896 he was a founding member of the magazine “Jugend.” He also painted several portraits around the start of the 20th century, most notably of Richard Strauss and Gerhart Hauptmann.
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| 1918 Der Letzte Hieb ist die 8. Kriegsanleihe by Paul Neumann ( Germany ) colour lithograph 57 x 43 cm |
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| 1918 Deutsche Luftkriegsbeute Ausstellung ( Germany ) colour lithograph 69 x 86 cm © IWM (Art.IWM PST 11247) |