Title: RARE & IMPORTANT TRAVEL POSTERS
Date: November 18, 2009
Time: 1:30 PM
Exhibition: Sat., November 14, 10-4
Mon., November 16, 10-6
Tues., November 17, 10-6
Wed., November 18, 10-noon
Contact Person: Nicholas Lowry
nlowry@swanngalleries.com

Swann Galleries’ auction of Rare & Important Travel Posters on November 18 saw several record prices set for desirable images promoting travel via sea, rail and air.

Nicholas Lowry, Swann Auction Galleries President and Poster Specialist, said, “With a sell-through rate of 80 percent, and a total 20 percent above the low pre-sale estimate, this sale appears to be the most successful poster auction anywhere in the past two years.”

Contributing to that success was an outstanding circa 1910 poster by Montague Birrel Black for the White Star Line, which included depictions of the Olympic & Titanic ships at sea. It sold for $36,000—more than any other poster by the artist (top).

Also setting artist records were Odin Rosenvinge’s rare and beautiful poster for another ill-fated ship the Cunard Line / [Lusitania], Liverpool, circa 1907, $14,400 (second illustration); and David Klein’s vibrant geometric depiction of Times Square, New York / Fly TWA, first printing, 1956, $6,000.

European highlights included Emil Cardinaux’s sunlit view of Zermatt, Zurich, 1908, a record $15,600 (third illustration); one of few travel posters by Leonetto Cappiello, for Nice, Paris, 1927, a record $8,400 (fourth illustration); Marcello Dudovich and Marcello Nizzoli’s Venezia Lido, Venice, circa 1930, $4,560; and an early Soviet tourist piece, Odessa / URSS, with a view of the Odessa Steps, circa 1935, $3,840.

A run of British posters included Maxwell Ashby Armfield’s Go to Kew, London, 1915, $3,840 (bottom); Charles Paine’s charming image of marching penguins, For the Zoo, London, 1921, $4,560; and Edward McKnight Kauffer’s advertisements for the London Underground, including Winter Sales are Best Reached by the Underground, 1922, $3,840, and Museum of Natural History, London, 1923, $3,600.

Featured American posters advertising railroad lines were Walter L. Greene’s powerful image of Storm King, the mountain in the Hudson River Valley, for the New York Central Line, 1928, brought $5,520; and Willard Frederic Elmes’s previously unknown poster, Ski Jumping / North Shore Line, Chicago, 1928, $3,840.

More far-flung were a previously undocumented variant of James Northfield’s Australia, circa 1935, $5,040; W.H.A. Constable’s India / by Imperial Airways, circa 1935, $3,360; The North China Railway Co. by an unknown artist, circa 1940, $4,560; and Paul Colin’s post-war image for Aerolineas Argentinas, showcasing the new DC-6 airliner, Paris, circa 1950, $3,360.