Imperial Posters A s I went up the steps of Burlington
House to see the Exhibition of Posters advertising the Empire's market products, my imagination flamed and warmed itself in advance at the prospect of seeing orange orchards flooded in sunlight, lonely sheep stations under cloudless- cobalt skies, and the restful green gloom of tropical jungles. But, like most people who expect a great deal, I was disappointed. There were only two artists that impressed me as having made the most of a romantic opportunity, and of having successfully combined the vividness of their subject with the essential advertising appeal.
Mr. McKnight Kauffer's designs for " Bananas " and " Cocoa from W. Africa " were easily the best pictures in the room in concentrated force and modern originality. Whether or no he has gone through the unpleasant apprenticeship of a visit to West Africa or not, he has certainly got the heavy, rather brooding and sinister atmosphere of the African jungle into his small illustrative plot of the great Market Garden. They are pictures which, I am convinced, will make an emphatic appeal to the great public that is influenced by and responds to advertisement.
- Mr. F. C. Herrick's " Wheat Harvest in Canada " also attracts very strongly, by the unaffected and simple realistic technique and also by the underlying suggestion of an attitude of mind that is in responsive sympathy with the vast, lonely, fertile prairie. Mr. Spencer-Pryset " Tea Planting in Ceylon " is from a very much more conventional and academic standpoint, and, though truthful as regards pose and action, it is somewhat lacking in verve, and originality. Mr. Pain's picture, " The Vines of Australia," though a satisfying design, does not approach the standard of his " Hampton Court "—an Underground adveitisement.
. It has been proved. that publicity can go successfully hand in hand with a high standard of art, but as I 'left Burlington House it was with the disappointed feeling that as a whole the artists had not risen to the height of a splendid opportunity.
E. HAMILTON MACK.
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