A new exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery opens later this month, showcasing an exceptional range of British advertising artwork from the 19th and 20th centuries. Joanna Lewis spoke with the gallery’s collections manager, Katharine Wall, to learn more.
The new Poster Power! exhibition promises a fascinating selection of posters promoting a wide range of events and campaigns, from theatre shows to travel and transport advertisements and artwork encouraging sign-up to the war efforts during World War I. According to the organisers, the exhibition will showcase to visitors how poster design has developed over time, while offering a nostalgic journey through the events and products advertised over the past two centuries.
The exhibition will also feature a stunning selection of vintage railway posters designed to entice tourists to Bath, with beautiful images of Georgian architecture and the Roman Baths, in addition to prints by Bath-based artists Clifford and Rosemary Ellis.
Katharine says the inspiration for the exhibition came from the highly successful 2024 Toulouse-Lautrec and the Masters of Montmartre exhibition featuring French posters, which got the team thinking about the artworks in the gallery’s own collection.
“As a public art gallery, our collection belongs to the community, and we want people to see these artworks. With some wonderful loans from Bath Record Office and Bath Spa University, we’ve been able to add enough to create an exhibition which covers 200 years of British poster design,” Katharine enthuses.
The exhibition will offer a fascinating treasure trove of material, with many of the posters having links to the Bath area, advertising local events such as Theatre Royal shows, the Bath & West Show, community events on Walcot Street, and Bath Festivals through the ages. The oldest and most recent artworks in the exhibition are both for the Theatre Royal: one from 1805, when the theatre moved to its current building, and one from 1989.
Many of the exhibits provide a fascinating glimpse into the history of Bath, such as a 1890s poster about the passionately fought campaign against creating a public library.
“It seems amazing to us now that people felt so strongly against something as obviously beneficial, but there were strong prejudices against taxing the wealthy to provide something that would mainly be used by people too poor to buy their own books,” explains Katharine. “Given that Bath’s original library was in the space where we now display exhibitions, I really wanted to get this little snippet of history into the show.”
There’s a lot of potential for nostalgia with this exhibition, and it’s great to be able to put things on display that will have a really powerful resonance for many local people.
Other highlights include eye-catching works by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis, who worked together to create designs for London Underground, Shell, and BP.
“Many of their posters include stunning depictions of animals and nature, and their beautiful poster of wolves among trees for Whipsnade Zoo is a captivating and cleverly designed work,” notes Katharine.
“Clifford Ellis became Head of Bath Academy of Art in 1937, so he’s a really important figure in Bath, and it’s great to be able to include work by him and his wife in the exhibition.”
Spoilt for choice
Katharine says the team were spoilt for choice when it came to deciding which posters to exhibit.
“We’ve got around 50 in our own collection, but Bath Record Office has an incredible and vast array of fascinating material, from 19th century broadsheets to Theatre Royal and Bath and West Show posters, plus fascinating artworks publicising community events like a Walcot Garden Party in 1977. We could only include a small proportion of them, so concentrated on choosing the posters that are the most visually interesting and that will appeal to the widest audience,” the curator says.
She adds: “One real privilege of working on an exhibition like this is that I’ve been able to sneak in a couple of Theatre Royal posters for productions that I remember going to as a teenager back in the early 1980s. Many of our visitors will also see publicity for events that they can remember, from exhibitions to pantomimes and Bath Festival performances. There’s a lot of potential for nostalgia with this exhibition, and it’s great to be able to put things on display that will have a really powerful resonance for many local people.”
Not only do the posters offer a fascinating glimpse into times gone by, but they also reveal striking changes in design.
“In the 19th century it was all about lettering, with hugely inventive typographers doing everything they could to make words printed in black and white eye-catching,” Katharine explains. “With the advent of lithography and colour printing, we see a host of really vibrant and beautiful designs and an emphasis on artistry and beauty, even for something as serious as a World War I army recruiting poster. By the mid-20th century, the designs became increasingly complex, featuring innovations like day-glow colours and photographic images.”
Poster Power! is on display at the Victoria Art Gallery from 23 January to 10 May. Visit victoriagal.org.uk for more details, including opening times and ticket prices. The exhibition is free for local Discovery
Card holders.