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Abstract
Between 1923 and 1939 the Great Western Railway (GWR) company produced over a hundred lithographic posters which advertised its services to the West Country. Despite their popularity during the period, these posters have been criticized by poster art scholars who consider them old-fashioned in comparison with modernist poster designs. This article aims to reconsider this dismissal by identifying the complex network of agents involved in GWR poster production and by examining the aesthetic, social and economic values the resulting posters were intended to extol.
Acknowledgements
My thanks go to Dr Francesca Berry for her support in writing this article and to Dr Emma West and Dr Kate Nichols for their help in developing the arguments within it. Thanks also to my anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful feedback.
This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 ‘A Book List’, 357
2 Harrington, ‘Beyond the Bathing Belle’; Watts, ‘Evaluating British Railway Poster Advertising’.
3 Sontag, ‘Posters: Advertisement, Art, Political Artifact, Commodity’.
4 The dismissal of traditional art in favour of avant-garde art is discussed in detail by Patrick Collier in Collier ‘Postscript: Against Modernist Studies’ 232–38
5 Cole and Durack, Railway Posters 1923–1947, 9, Shackelton, The Golden Age of the Railway Poster, 104, Frost, Railway Posters, 28.
6 First established in Bourdieu, ‘The Market of Symbolic Goods’ these ideas were expanded by Tickner, in ‘Bohemianism and the Cultural Field’.
7 McKnight Kauffer ‘Advertising Art: the Designer and the Public’, 66
8 Hewitt, ‘East Coast Joys’. 292
9 Shin and Divall, ‘Cultures of Speed and Conservative Modernity’ 22.
10 Medcalf, ‘“We Are Always Learning”’.Medcalf, Railway Photographic Advertising in Britain, 1900–1939; Medcalf, ‘Picturing the Modern Consumer on the Great Western Railway’.
11 ‘The Prince of Wales on the Art of the Hoardings’, 160
12 Railway Act 1921.
13 South Wales Daily News (November 27, 1922)
14 Wilson, Go Great Western – A History Of GWR Publicity, 25.
15 This issue is noted by Medcalf, Railway Photographic Advertising in Britain, 1900-1939, 36.
16 Scott, The Market Makers, 281.
17 Law, ‘Charabancs and Social Class in 1930s Britain’, 43.
18 Emma West has discussed these ideas extensively in both her unpublished PhD thesis ‘The Highs and Lows of Modernism’ and in conference papers and public lectures on the subject
19 Cork, Vorticism and Abstract Art in the First Machine Age.
20 A discussion of the West Country’s reputation and of the effect this had on GWR publicity can be found in Medcalf, ‘“We Are Always Learning”’, 191–93. Specific discussions of this in relation to Cornwall can be found in Moseley, ‘“It’s a Wild Country. Wild … Passionate … Strange”’; and Light, Forever England, 156–207.
21 Lock, ‘Railway Advertising’, 3
22 Herbert ‘English Holiday Posters’, 23; Gossop, ‘Holiday Posters’ 183
23 Wilson, Go Great Western – A History of GWR Publicity, 24.
24 Brunner, Holiday Making and the Holiday Trades, 59
Brunner, Holiday Making and the Holiday Trades, 59
25 ‘Glorious Devon’, song by Edward German 1905
26 Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 2.
27 Publicity Committee Minutes, Dec. 1925 – Jan. 1931 R4582A/0/TC/174
28 Urry, The Tourist Gaze, 88.
29 Howkins, ‘The Discovery of Rural England’, 87.
30 Windsor, Handbook of Modern British Painting, 1900–1980, 234.
31 Wilson, Go Great Western – A History of GWR Publicity, 76
32 Rennie, Modern British Posters.
33 Examples of such articles are ‘Paignton as a Holiday Resort’, Torbay Express and South Devon Echo, Friday January 6, 1939; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette Saturday February 16, 1924,
34 Minutes of Council, Jan. 1921 – Mar1923 R4582A/0/TC/21, Minutes of Council, Apr. 1923 – Nov 1925 R4582A/0/TC/22
35 Minutes of Baths and Beaches, Committee Nov. 1921, Jan. 1921 – Feb. 1924, R4582A/0/TC/167
36 Publicity Committee Minutes, Dec. 1925 – Jan. 1931 R4582A/0/TC/174
37 R4582A/0/TC/174
38 Minute book of Council and Committees, Sep 1922 – Dec 1923 R4582A/0/BC/8
39 Minutes of Council and Committees, Apr. 1925 – June 1926 R4582A/0/BC/10
40 Minutes of Council and Committees, July 1926 – June 1928 R4582A/0/BC/12; Minutes of Council and Committees, July 1928 – Oct. 1929 R4582A/0/BC/13
41 R4582A/0/BC/13
42 Publicity Committee Minutes Oct. 1934 – Oct. 1938, R4582A/0/TC/176
43 Morgan and Pritchard, Power and Politics at the Seaside, 35.
44 Yates, ‘Selling the Seaside’, 20.
45 Natural Charms of Torquay, Western Morning News, August 8, 1928.
46 Luscombe, ‘A Torbay Holiday’ 835.
47 Taylor, ‘“A Fascinating Show for John Citizen and His Wife”’, 126.
48 Urry, p.19
49 Taylor, ‘“A Fascinating Show for John Citizen and His Wife”’, 126.
50 Scott, ‘A New Seaside Resort’, 177.
51 ‘The Devon Coast and the Exe Valley’, 117.
52 Harrington, ‘Beyond the Bathing Belle’ 23.
53 Publicity Committee Minutes, Feb. 1931 – Sep. 1934, R4582A/0/TC/175
54 R4582A/0/TC/174
55 Stephenson, ‘“Strategies of Situation”’, 30.
56 Purvis, ‘Commercial Art’, 658
57 Zinkeisen in Cole, The Road to Success, 184
58 Peto quoted in Wade, ‘Poster-Art Work for Girls’ 199
59 Konody, ‘Poster Art and the Railway Companies’, 14, Connolly, ‘The New Medici’.
60 Williamson, ‘Various Views on Poster Technique’, 143
61 Harris, Romantic Moderns; Bluemel, ‘Rural Modernity and the Wood Engraving Revival in Interwar England’; Malvern, ‘War Tourisms’; Causey, ‘English Art and National Character’.
62 The term ‘janus-faced’ was first used by Alison Light, in Forever England, 10, in reference to her term ‘conservative modernity. It has since been used more generally to refer to British attitudes to modernism in Short, Gilbert, and Matless, ‘Historical Geographies of British Modernity’; Bluemel, ‘Rural Modernity and the Wood Engraving Revival in Interwar England’.
63 Nash, ‘Unit One’, 14.
64 Hind, ‘The Topographical Tramps’ 270; Binyon, ‘The Art of John Sell Cotman’ 158
65 Richmond, The Technique of the Poster, v.
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Rebecca Savage
Rebecca Savage is an AHRC doctoral student at the University of Birmingham completing a PhD on female poster artists working in Britain between 1900 and 1939. Her work considers the intersections between fine art and visual culture and attempts to assess how poster design disrupted these traditional boundaries.