by James Taylor
Many of the now celebrated wartime pictures and sculptures were displayed at the Royal Academy (the most prestigious arts organisation in Britain) during and immediately after the war. They were commissioned as part of various official art schemes, and were featured for propaganda, commemorative and fundraising purposes. Among the famous names were: Muirhead Bone, Francis Dodd, George Clausen, Jacob Epstein, Stanhope Forbes, Charles Sargeant Jagger, Augustus John, Eric Kennington, John Lavery, Percy Wyndham Lewis, John and Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson, William Orpen, Charles Pears, John Singer Sargent, Stanley Spencer, Philip Wilson Steer and Norman Wilkinson.
In ‘Return To The Front’, Jack captured the disillusionment of soldiers at the railway station. Only one can be seen smiling. The Scottish soldier seated on the floor close to the girl selling copies of popular magazines (which may well have included The Bystander, London Opinion and Punch) is lost in thought about his family and his future. To that end Jack created, although almost certainly unintentionally, what appears to modern eyes to be an anti-war picture. It was exhibited by Jack in a private capacity at the Royal Academy in 1916. Jack was a popular and versatile artist who painted portraits of King George V and Queen Mary, he became a Royal Academician (RA) in 1920 and emigrated to Canada in 1938.
Dwindling public enthusiasm for recruitment posters reached a tipping point in the early summer months of 1915. Production far exceeded the demand for the PRC posters, and stockpiling turned from being a frustration into a scandal that leaked into the public domain. The problems of tens of thousands of posters in storage prompted cartoon parodies, one of which appeared in The Bystander on 8th September 1915, entitled ‘What to Do with Our War Posters – A Hint To Advertisers showing how, if the war were to end suddenly, the surplus stock of recruiting posters left on the country’s hands could be usefully turned to account’.35
Both letterpress and pictorial types of poster would continue to be produced during the war years, but in considerably smaller numbers. PRC records demonstrated that posters had played a crucial role (albeit, in some quarters, an unpopular and unwelcome one) in the enlistment of men for active service and women for work on the Home Front, from the outbreak of World War I until the end of summer in 1915. Posters had been part-and-parcel of a global operation of influence.
The writer of the article ‘Recruiting By Poster’ (Windsor Magazine No. 246, June 1915) – who probably worked on behalf of the PRC, so the content needs to be treated with a degree of caution – noted that ‘The hoardings of the country have been covered with an infinite variety of pictorial and letterpress appeals to the manhood of the nation to come forward and take a share in that greatest of all fights, the struggle for national existence.
‘The magnitude of this modern auxiliary to the efforts of the recruiting-sergeant has had the effect of attracting widespread criticism. Some sensitive folk seem to think it very sad that a great country should find it necessary to resort to what has been stigmatised as “bullying by poster”. But what alternative would they suggest? It is scarcely possible that the exhibition of millions of posters can have failed to produce useful results. It is manifestly impossible to gauge the influence which has been exerted by this medium: yet it is a reasonable assumption that a goodly percentage of those who have joined the military forces since the outbreak of the Great War have been directly influenced, if not entirely led, by the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee’s publications.’
‘There’s Room For You’ (LoC)
The article also revealed that ‘Natives of Holland and other neutral States on the Continent have asked for copies of posters, and there have been applications from France and Russia. From the United States also numerous letters have been received, and from many parts of the British empire have emanated requests for supplies – from Canada, Newfoundland, British Colombia, India, Australasia, and South Africa, and from others of the Colonies, and an exceedingly interesting fact is that specific illustrations have found their way to the Australian camp under the shadow of the Pyramids in Egypt. What more convincing proof could be wished of the world-wide influence of this remarkable poster campaign?’
The PRC proudly boasted that ‘the work was not by any means confined to the Mother country. From all parts of the Empire and from various neutral countries came requests for supplies [of posters]… it is a fair assumption that there is hardly a civilised part of the globe to which our publications have not found their way. In Canada and in Australia [they have made] important use of our posters and pamphlets… aiding the Recruitment Movement… and many tons of them have been shipped across the Atlantic in the last few months.’36
However, the protracted war on several fronts had required increasing numbers of manpower (let’s not forget the womanpower needed in many other spheres of operation too), and by the end of summer 1915 the introduction of conscription was viewed by many as inevitable. Rather than disband the machinery of the PRC, it was later transformed into the Parliamentary War Savings Committee.
Irish recruitment poster (Priv.)
Leete’s poster for the British Army (IWM)
CHAPTER 3
ALFRED LEETE’S LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS
AND THE BIRTH OF THE LONDON SKETCH CLUB
ALFRED AMBROSE CHEW LEETE was born on 28th August 1882 in the historic village of Thorpe Achurch, near Northampton in the east Midlands of England. Known as ‘A’ by his family, he was the eldest child of John Alfred Leete and Harriet Eliza, née Chew. His father came from a long line of farmers that can be traced back to the Norman Conquest.
Leete had two brothers, John and Sidney, as well as a sister, Sarah Frances. In 1893, the whole family moved from Northamptonshire to the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare on the west coast of Somerset, close to the city of Bristol, where it was hoped that the fresh air and warmer weather would be beneficial to his father’s ill-health. Farming life was left behind and his parents established a thriving hotel business, which included Addington House and Sutherland House. Leete would later spend a considerable amount of time in London maintaining a house there, although he regarded Weston-super-Mare as his adopted home.37
Alfred Leete attended Kingsholme School and went on to the School of Science and Art. Sadly, his sister Sarah died, but two younger siblings, Hilda and Dorothy, completed the family.
Family records show that Leete was interested in drawing from an early age and his father arranged for Leete to take up an apprenticeship with a Bristol architect. In those days, draughtsmanship was a fundamental part of that profession. Leete was bored with the work but it helped to improve his artistic skills and develop his knowledge of perspective. He was encouraged by his employer, who also practised as an artist and contributed drawings to local magazines, including Bristol Magpie. An example of Leete’s early work for that magazine was published in the Christmas edition of 1902. It depicted, in the popular linear Art Nouveau style of the time, a fashionable lady raising a glass of champagne. The design is accompanied by the caption ‘Wishing You a Merry Xmas’, and signed with his initials A.L. From the 1910s, he would introduce his trademark ‘dropped T’ signature.38
Alfred Leete self-portrait (Woodspring Museum)
Life as a commercial artist
Adventure and ambition were no doubt behind Leete’s decision to leave the architect’s office and head for London, hopeful that the newspapers and magazines based in and close to Fleet Street would pay handsomely for his artwork. His youthful optimism was temporarily dampened by the large number of rejections, and he returned to Bristol to work as a designer in a furniture factory.
However, Leete had a positive outlook on life. By all accounts he was a genial and witty man. The author and historian Lornie Leete-Hodge, perhaps best known for The Country Life Book of Diana, Princess of Wales (Book Club Associates, 1982), wrote a small catalogue to accompany an exhibition about her forebear held at the Woodspring Museum, Weston-super-Mare, in 1985. She believed him to be possessed of three essential qualities: ‘perseverance
, prolific output and popular manner – “A” determined to make good through the days of the Boer War – [of] great hardship and unemployment, but he did not give up, and at last the editor of Ally Sloper magazine took some of his work at five shillings each.’39
The full title of this weekly magazine was Ally Sloper’s Half-Holiday and this British comic, first published on 3rd May 1884, has a legitimate claim to being the first comic magazine named after and featuring a regular character. Ally Sloper was a good-for-nothing lazy schemer often in trouble and invariably found ‘sloping’ in alleyways to escape his landlord and other creditors. The magazine was published at The Sloperies, Bolt Court in Fleet Street, London. According to Leete-Hodge, her famous ancestor’s feet were finally on the career ladder.
Leete may well have contributed to some magazines before Ally Sloper. Jim Aulich’s biography of Leete for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography noted that ‘As a self-taught artist his first paid work came in 1897 when the Daily Graphic accepted one of his drawings. He also contributed to the Bristol Magpie before moving in 1899 to London, where he took up a post as an artist with a printer.’
Leete’s cartoon for his home town (Priv.)
Alfred Leete usually drew his cartoons, although he would also use watercolours and was versatile enough to paint any subject, according to Leete-Hodge. She recalled ‘A torn scrapbook from a holiday in France, not even dated, [that] shows a galaxy of sketches of people and places his keen eye had observed and re-created. There are old men, women, places such as Grasse where he has captured a corner house with flowered balcony; elegant Monaco with the Prince’s yacht; the Cathedral at Dijon (not the building as such as the gargoyles around it); the Rhone ferry boat, an address in Nice; but for fashionable Nice itself, that haven of English tourists, he chooses an old French washerwoman lumbering up the shore, a basket of washing on her head. The book is signed, of course, with a caricatured self-portrait complete with small dog.’
Leete occasionally painted in oils but he never considered himself to be a fine artist. He took great pride, derived enormous satisfaction and earned a good living, from practising as a cartoonist, comic illustrator and commercial artist. His wealth at death in 1933 was the considerable sum of £9,579 6s. 3d.
Leete’s advertising and commercial work included artwork for local businesses in his beloved Weston-super-Mare, but also for many national companies, such as Bovril, Connolly Leather (supplying primarily to car manufacturers), Guinness, Hector Powe (an English tailoring company), Pratt’s Petrol, Rowntree’s chocolates, Ronuk Polish and Younger’s Brewery. He is credited with devising the ‘Father William’ character (who had a distinctive, long, white beard) for William Younger’s Brewery, and ‘Mr York of York, Yorks’, who ‘recommends Rowntree’s Plain York Chocolate’, both creations of the 1920s.40
‘HMS Lion’ (SHC)
From 1915 to 1928, he supplied artwork for the Underground Electric Railway Company, the precursor to the London Underground. One memorable example, ‘The Lure of The Underground’ (1927), depicted people in London (all wearing hats) being drawn down into the Underground system by a mysterious force. The image is one of the most popular sellers in the Museum of Transport shop in Covent Garden and can be found on fridge magnets, mugs and notebooks. Leete was personally proud of ‘The Roads Are Never Up On The London Underground’, printed in 1928, and the original artwork featured on the wall in the background of a photograph depicting Leete working at his desk. Leete submitted drawings, cartoons and illustrations for advertising and to illustrate topical news events, for stand-alone humorous sketches, and for the covers of many of the leading magazines of the day, including: Illustrated London News, Punch, Strand Magazine, Tatler, The Bystander, The Passing Show and The Sketch. Pick Me Up ran his series ‘Play Titles Travestied’ from 1899 to 1907, and it was then continued in London Opinion. Punch first published one of his cartoons on 22nd November 1905 and last published one on 28th October 1931. Leete also benefitted from regular commissions from the Pall Mall Gazette and this additional security encouraged him to propose to Edith Jane, the daughter of William Webb, who was an accountant. They were married on 7th November 1909. Their surviving child, a son, was born in 1915.
In good company with A.E. Johnson and the London Sketch Club
Freelancing in commercial art was a precarious means of employment, however, Leete was developing a valuable network of contacts and also representation from the artists’ agent A.E. Johnson, an association established prior to his marriage. The Somerset Heritage Centre has a collection of Leete’s work that includes references to A.E. Johnson. On the back of a drawing entitled ‘Breaking it Gently’ (circa 1910), depicting a man tying to break open an egg, can be found the following details: ‘Return to A.E. Johnson, Artists’ Agent, 10 Lancaster Place, W.C., London.’
‘Breaking it Gently’ (SHC)
According to English Company Records, A.E. Johnson had incorporated his business on 1st January 1900 and it was still active in the early 1960s. Johnson himself was a former journalist and writer who penned a series of books, entitled Brush, Pen and Pencil, promoting the work of artists who worked predominantly in black and white. They included John Hassall in 1907 followed by (in alphabetical order): Tom Browne, Dudley Hardy, Frank Reynolds, William Heath Robinson (the devisor of wacky gadgets and machines) and Lawson Wood, known for his humorous depictions of animals, especially the ginger ape called Gran’pop. Some proved so popular they were reprinted in the 1930s.
Henry Mayo Bateman, famous for his ‘The Man Who…’ series, which featured comically exaggerated reactions to minor and usually upper-class social gaffes, was among the notable artists, cartoonists and illustrators on the books of A.E. Johnson. There was also Bruce Bairnsfather; the Punch contributors Frank Reynolds, Ernest Shepard, W.A. Sillince and Norman Thelwell; the marine painter Frank Henry Mason; sporting artist Lionel Edwards; and landscape painter Edward Seago.
‘Help’ (SHC)
Bairnsfather was popularly known for his humorous series of drawings showing life in the trenches for The Bystander. It featured ‘Old Bill’, the curmudgeonly Tommy with trademark walrus moustache and balaclava, and it brilliantly captured the absurdity of war on the Western Front. His work was drawn from first-hand experience having joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1914 in which he served with a machine gun unit in France until 1915. The cartoons were extremely popular with serving soldiers because although they were exaggerated for comic effect they also caught realistic aspects of the hardships of the trenches.
‘Smoking Conversazione’ artwork (London Sketch Club)
Bairnsfather, Bateman and Mason also created posters themselves, or their images were incorporated into propaganda designs, during both World Wars. Cyril Kenneth Bird, better known by the pseudonym ‘Fougasse’, was also represented by A.E. Johnson. He started working for Punch during World War I and became art editor and later editor of the magazine. He created the celebrated series of anti-rumour and gossip posters entitled ‘Careless Talk Costs Lives’, first printed in February 1940.41
Although Leete did mingle and socialise with fine artists (painters in watercolours and oils who exhibited at the official societies), ‘he shunned the traditional art establishment and once famously remarked that he “would rather win a medal at golf than be an RA [Royal Academician],”’ according to Leete-Hodge.
Leete was at home in the confines of clubs, especially those frequented by commercial artists, cartoonists and illustrators. He was a prominent member of the London Sketch Club, which was founded in 1898. Today, members still meet weekly ‘for life drawing, conviviality and supper, carrying on the traditions of the artist members’. Originally, members were part of the Langham Sketching Club, but ‘in 1898 a ridiculous argument broke out amongst its members, as to whether the suppers should be hot or cold. Daft as it may seem now, a largish group including such luminaries as Cecil Aldin, Tom Browne, Dudley Hardy, John Hassall and Phil May, who all wanted hot, broke away
from the Langham, who wanted cold, and the London Sketch Club was born.’42
Between 1925 and 1926 Leete was Vice-President, President and a member of the dance committee (Leete-Hodge claimed he was President in 1928, although this appears to be an error of memory). He was also an active member of the Savage Club. He designed invitations, menu cards and other artwork for both organisations, notably for the ‘Smoking Conversazione’, the meetings for conversation, discussion and gossip usually about art matters, that were so popular at that time.
Members also hosted meetings and parties at their own houses and studios, and the London Sketch Club quickly developed a reputation for its lively parties and diverse entertainments. Membership was eclectic. A.E. Johnson was a lay member. Robert Baden-Powell was a member, although art was not his primary profession. Other prominent members included the illustrator Edmund Dulac, the mainstream maritime painter Charles Dixon, and the official war artist and former Vorticist C.R.W. Nevinson. Sir George Younger of William Younger’s Brewery was also a member, which explains how Leete gained an introduction to that company.43
Harry Lawrence Oakley was a longstanding member who was president of the club from 1947 to 1948. He had served with the Green Howards in World War I, and was renowned for his silhouette pictures cut with scissors. He would have contributed to the frieze that ran around the walls of the main drawing room of the club featuring the profiles of members that included Leete. Oakley produced a silhouette of the Prince of Wales (later the Duke of Windsor) and his skills were utilised in several notable recruitment advertisements and posters that were emulated by others in Britain and abroad.