Rare & Important Travel Posters at Swann Galleries November 25
- by Announcement, Rare Book Hub staff
Lot 221: Fred Taylor, Why Not Visit London for a Few Days, 1925. Estimate $4,000 to $6,000.
New York—Rare & Important Travel Posters at Swann Galleries continues to live up to its name, offering many of the world's most prominent travel poster designers. This season’s sale on Tuesday, November 25, will include a captivating compendium of ocean, air and train travel images from destinations that span the globe.
One of the most scarce and beautiful British travel posters from the 1930s, Why Not Visit London for a Few Days, by Fred Taylor, is an exquisite nighttime scene of Piccadilly Circus ($4,000-6,000). With its stylish, bustling foot and automotive traffic, neon lights and nocturnal illumination, the poster is so scarce, we could not locate a single other copy to have come to auction. Also from the British Rail Company, comes Arthur C. Michael's tender and charming Felixstowe / It's Quicker By Rail, 1934, in which a young girl sits on her grandfather's lap inside a train carriage, admiring the sights they pass along the way ($2,000-3,000).
Travel posters advertising destinations across the globe include an extremely scarce poster by Otakar Stafl promoting travel to Baska, Croatia, from circa 1913 ($1,500-2,000); a rare Czech poster by Frantisek Cardos promoting travel in the Czech lands from 1937 ($2,000-3,000); a cheeky 1966 Air India poster by V. V. Sheye ($1,500-2,000); and Mitsuharu Horiuchi’s The North China Railway Co., circa 1939 ($3,000-4,000). Images advertising travel to Australia, Egypt, Venice, Seville and more also feature.
Posters advertising the New York Central Line include Leslie Ragan’s The New 20th Century Limited, 1939 ($15,000-20,000); Anthony Hansen's The Palisades of the Hudson, circa 1930s ($3,500-4,500), and New England, 1935 ($1,000-1,500); Frederic Madan's Niagara Falls circa 1928 ($2,000-3,000); Frank Hazell’s West Point, 1927 ($2,000-3,000); and Chesley Bonestell’s The New York Central Building ($8,000-12,000).
Additional North American highlights include a run of works by David Klein with his 1956 image for New York leading the selection ($7,000-10,000); a 1902 poster for the Cincinnati Fall Festival ($7,000-10,000); a selection of three Canadian Pacific Railway ads with Hugo Laubi’s Canadian Pacific / To the Canadian Farm, circa 1920 ($1,500-2,000) leading the three; and Miguel Covarrubias’s image for Oaxaca, Mexico, circa 1940s, by the Mexican Tourist Association ($600-900).
Exhibition hours are 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 20, through Saturday, November 22, and Monday, November 24. Bidding is available through online platforms, absentee, the phone, and live in-person. Live online bidding platforms will be the Swann Galleries Website, Invaluable, and Live Auctioneers. The complete catalogue and bidding information is available at www.swanngalleries.com.
