NEW YORK, NY.- 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 seasons 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 Horiuchis 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 Ragans 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 Hazells West Point, 1927 ($2,000-3,000); and Chesley Bonestells 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 Laubis Canadian Pacific / To the Canadian Farm, circa 1920 ($1,500-2,000) leading the three; and Miguel Covarrubiass image for Oaxaca, Mexico, circa 1940s, by the Mexican Tourist Association ($600-900).