£875
MODERN MADE | Design on the Move: Posters from the Shell Heritage Art Collection | 655
Auction: 29 April 2021 at 19:00 BST
lithographic poster, 1933, condition A; not backed
Literature:
Hewitt, The Shell Poster Book, 53.
The ‘Everywhere you Go, You can be Sure of Shell’ series featured fine landmarks, historical sights and inspiring landscapes, all firmly located in the countryside. It was an idealized view of a rural order much sought after by the middle classes, particularly those from large towns. “By celebrating and making accessible such rural delights, Shell won the plaudits of powerful pressure groups who sought to protect the countryside from urban expansion and the destruction of rural amenities by advertising hoardings”. The first exhibition of these Shell posters took place at the New Burlington Galleries in June 1931.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1896 Cathleen Mann followed in the footsteps of both her parents and became a painter of portraits and landscapes. Her father was Scottish portrait painter Harrington Mann and her mother portraitist Florence Sabine Pasley.
West Wycombe was developed as an important 18th Century staging post along the old coaching route from London to Oxford. The village features many buildings of architectural value which were built between the 16th and 18th Centuries. Mann has chosen to feature the unmistakable 14th Century church, located high on West Wycombe Hill. The poster features the famous ‘Golden Ball’, a copy of the Custom House in Venice.