Today’s image, an advertising artwork for the Supermarine Swift.

Unusually for this kind of work it looks to be watercolour, though it may be a wet looking gouache, and unfortunately I can’t make out the signature. It’s a deceptively simple composition, but very effective, and despite the heavy industrial aspects of the image – the aircraft, military airfield and factories on the horizon, has an almost pastoral feel to it.

Almost certainly a company advertisement to extol the type, despite heavy marketing and record setting efforts the Swift proved ultimately to be regarded as a failure as a type, Supermarine never recapturing anything like the success of the Spitfire with their post war types.

James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer.

Image from the ‘Vault of the Atomic Age’ Facebook page, here.