Today’s Poster. Certainly not the sort of thing one might expect promoting a flying week.

Apparently nude women in the reeds (with eel tails!?) were a thing in the 1900s. Antwerp’s 1909 week of aviation. (Anvers being the French name for the town.) The aircraft are (more?) realistic, featuring a dirigible, an Antoinette monoplane (probably the then-current VII) and a Voisin biplane, the older 1907 type. Pictures from the show of Miss Eel, 1909, don’t seem to have survived.

This report says: “In Antwerp some Belgian pilots and aircraft manufacturers endeavoured to get their contraptions into the air. Amongst the names on the program could be noticed some future celebrities such as Olieslagers and E.O. Tips, Tips being the first Belgian to fly a Belgian-built machine of his own design. The French De la Vaux flew his Zodiac III dirigible balloon. Prince Albert, future King of Belgium, took the opportunity to fly with De la Vaux, feat that was heavily frowned upon by King Leopold II .”

More details here and here, and a more conventional poster:

James Kightly, Vintage Aero Writer.

Found online, both posters marked “Ratinckx Frères, Antwerpen” and “Ratinckx Frères, Anvers” though other sources suggest the main poster is by “Portielje”, possibly painter Gerard Portielje.