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Propaganda Posters

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently with our collection of posters, mostly propaganda or advertising, as I’ve been photographing them so we can have the images in our database. For some reason, I have always been drawn to posters, especially those with bright, colorful images (as with the ones I shared a few posts ago). So without further ado, here are some of the ones I have been working with this week.

The first poster is a Navy recruiting poster from 1917 and was done by artist Kenyon Cox. The second is a very bright poster that hung in the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company to encourage workers to keep at their work. The clown is a little creepy, but nevertheless, this is a great poster. The third is a Russian poster from 1932 that a fantastic volunteer recently translated for me. I’m not exactly sure why the poster was made, but it might possibly be to celebrate the creation of the Russian Pacific Fleet.

The first one here is propaganda poster, ca 1917, meant to encourage all people to work hard for the war effort. It was published by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee in London and the artwork was created by Lt. Gen. Sir R. S. S. Baden Powell (you can read about him on Wikipedia HERE). The second poster caught my attention because Uncle Sam looks really intense and creepy. This poster is also from the WWI era, 1917, and was done by artist Dan Sayre Groesback. On it is a quote from the Secretary of the Treasury, William Gibbs McAdoo. The third one is probably my favorite out of this group of three because of the soft colors. For some reason I find them very appealing. Like the other two, this is also WWI era, 1918. The image was done by artist Howard Chandler Christy, who is famous for his depiction of women in propaganda posters. We have a number of his works in our collection and they are all fantastic.

As I continue with this project, I will share more of my finds with everyone. By the time I finish, images of all these posters will be available in our internal database and eventually, they will be available in our online database that anyone can search.

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