War Poster WWI Sailors Soldiers Tobacco Fund Brangwyn

Original vintage WWI propaganda poster encouraging contributions to the Sailors' & Soldiers' Tobacco Fund: It is a significant fact that almost every letter from the Front contains a request for 'something to smoke'. Stark black and white artwork by Frank Brangwyn shows a group of soldiers on the front with the tower of the cathedral of Ypres in the background. Ypres is a town in the Belgian province of West Flanders, an area where many battles unfolded during World War I. Printed by the Avenue Press Ltd. Sir Frank William Brangwyn RA RWS RBA (12 May 1867- 11 June 1956) was an Anglo-Welsh artist, painter, watercolourist, engraver, illustrator and progressive designer. Brangwyn was an artistic jack-of-all-trades. As well as paintings and drawings, he produced designs for stained glass, furniture, ceramics, table glassware, buildings and interiors, was a lithographer and woodcutter and was a book illustrator. It has been estimated that during his lifetime Brangwyn produced over 12,000 works. His mural commissions would cover over 22,000 sq ft (2,000 m2) of the canvas, he painted over 1,000 oils, over 660 mixed media works (watercolours, gouache), over 500 etchings, about 400 wood engravings and woodcuts, 280 lithographs, 40 architectural and interior designs, 230 designs for items of furniture and 20 stained glass panels and windows. Brangwyn received some artistic training, probably from his father, and later from Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and in the workshops of William Morris, but he was largely an autodidact without a formal artistic education. When, at the age of seventeen, one of his paintings was accepted at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, he was strengthened in his conviction to become an artist. Initially, he painted traditional subjects about the sea and life on the seas. His 1890 canvas, Funeral At Sea won a medal of the third class at the 1891 Paris Salon. The murals for which Brangwyn was famous, and during his lifetime he was very famous indeed, were brightly coloured and crowded with details of plants and animals, although they became flatter and less flamboyant later in his life. Good condition, water marks, creases and repaired tears in margins, backed on cardboard. Year of printing: 1915, country of printing: UK, designer: Frank Brangwyn, dimensions (cm): 76x49.5.