Paul and Karen Rennie are delighted to offer,for sale, some rare 1950's
London Transport posters. This period of graphic design has until very
recently been overlooked and even discarded.
As with Frank Pick's earlier advertising campaign in the 1930's, notable
fine artists were employed to create these eye-catching images.
John Arnold 1949
note the depiction of a fruitful post-war Britain, especially the land-girl
picking apples in her cord breeches and green stockings.
Ivon Hitchens 1951
Hitchens 1893 -1979 b.London, studied RA schools. Founder member
of 7&5 society. 1929 member of London Artist's Association.
1931 member of London Group. He was an important modern
landscape artist. 1979 retrospective held at the RA.
Denys Nicholls 1951
The 1940's and 50's was a period, in England, when the public were
encouraged to explore Britain's countryside and archaeology.
Writers such as John Betjeman and Niklaus Pevsner had already begun
to produce architectural guides to the counties of England. The publisher
Paul Elek was just beginning his series Visions of England which explore
the themes of neo-romanticism, history and the neo-gothic.
More recently Simon Jenkins has produced an updated version of this project.
This was also a period of great expansion at the National Trust,
under James Lees Milne, who took on many great houses for the nation.
The London Transport posters reflect the cultural interests of their time
and also evoke something of the collectivism of Ealing films and the
Festival of Britain (1951).
These pictorial posters were part of a series published by London Transport
in the late1940's and early 1950's, that were presented as double sheets.
The artist-designers were invited to use one sheet, in its entirety,
to illustrate a particular theme - markets, fairs, the river,churches,
parks and royal palaces. The second sheet was mostly given over
to travel information. These are unlikely to have been saved.
The posters presented here work as stand alone images within the
context of this campaign.
We have other London Transport material .
and if you are a devotee of travelling on the old routemasters
and underground trains, please take a look at our limited edition
Also, we have several pre-war posters by McKnight Kauffer.
The above posters have all been sold
to view posters available in our shop please click here