Today’s Poster is another on the Soviet aviation’s soaring air forces theme, as seen earlier here. Entitled ‘Glory to the Soviet Aviators!’ by a B. Reshetnikov, it’s a remarkable array of then current (1973) Soviet aircraft, stretching back to even before the revolution of 1917, with the lowest left aircraft being one of the pre-Great…
Tag: WWI
Bomber Blackened Sky
A remarkable print today, thanks to regular correspondent Gregory Alegi. A very evocative, dark (literally and figuratively) image of Caproni Ca.3 trimotor bombers approaching an industrial centre. So dense are they they’ve achieved the cliche of ‘turning the sky black’. Initially, due to the use of the black block I thought it was a woodcut,…
Killer in a Harry Tate
Today’s Poster. From Heritage Auctions, a newspaper strip featuring Great war ace Captain F.R. McCall, and drawn by American artist Clayton Knight. This was one of a series of posters, I chose this one because it shows a typical final artwork as photo-reproduced for newspaper publication, and it features an ace with an unusual career, as…
Power’s Swirl
Today is a 1935 linocut, the original print being just over a foot square. A dramatic and dynamic work, by Cyril E Power, it fits well with his oeuvre, many of the linocuts featuring dynamic, swirling, moving shapes inside a square frame. It’s entitled ‘air raid’, which is interesting as it would be better entitled…
Clash of Symbolic Eagles
Today’s Poster is an incredibly strong design, the equal in some ways of the ‘Your Country Needs You’ Kitchener / Uncle Sam example, though I’m sure this is far less well known. The poster was created by Charles Livingston Bull, 1874 – 1932, and produced by the Alpha Litho. Co., Inc., N.Y. Taking advantage of…
Airship Tension
Two artworks showing the experience of operating airships in the Great War, one from the German side, the other from the British. John Lavery’s, ‘A Convoy, North Sea, 1918’ gives a good feel of the vertiginous experience of being suspended between sea and sky while providing an anti-U-Boat patrol over a merchant ship convoy. While…
Garish Harry
A pulp magazine cover. This one, from ‘Air Stories’ magazine of the inter war period features much promise in the text, but I’ve chosen it because it features a reasonably accurately drawn Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8, known to its crews as a ‘Harry Tate’ after the music hall comedian of the era. But. The shape’s…
Crash Pastoral
Today’s Poster has a remarkably placid feel, despite depicting the aftermath of a floatplane ditching. Entitled ‘Warning! Consider the possible consequences if you are careless in your work’, it is a 1917 painting by L.N. Britton, reproduced as a 104 x 72 cm poster and shows a pair of US Navy floatplanes, one of the…
Starry Biplane
This riff on a very conventional looking Christian oil painting by N. C. Wyeth (1882 – 1945), entitled ‘The Sign in the Heavens which the Judean Shepherds Watching Their Flocks See this Year’ differs only from the conventional Christian iconography in having a biplane as the subject of the shepherds’ gaze. Dating from 1918, it…
The Red-Blue Max
A very strange story today, around the well-known book ‘The Blue Max’ which was made into an even better-known film* of the same name. The book was written by Jack D Hunter, a fantastic name for an action-novel writer, but actually his real name as well. The cover for the first edition of the book…
A Year of Aviation Illustration & Art 