Many travelers can still remember the days when framed pictures, advertisements and maps kept them company in their railway compartments in the days of steam. This is the first book on the railway carriage print and is written by the leading authority on the subject, Greg Norden. It describes how railway companies first portrayed themselves though scenic photographs and advertisements and carries the story through to the height of the genre in the mid-20th century, when the railway publicity departments moved into colour ...
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Many travelers can still remember the days when framed pictures, advertisements and maps kept them company in their railway compartments in the days of steam. This is the first book on the railway carriage print and is written by the leading authority on the subject, Greg Norden. It describes how railway companies first portrayed themselves though scenic photographs and advertisements and carries the story through to the height of the genre in the mid-20th century, when the railway publicity departments moved into colour reproduction and commissioned some of the leading watercolour artists of the day, including Rowland Hilder, Jack Merriott and Charles Knight, to paint scenes from all around Britain. From the mid-1930s to the late-1960s, trains virtually became travelling art galleries, and it is this period which forms the centrepiece for the book. Using many of the beautiful prints from his personal collection, Greg Norden takes us on a nostalgic tour of Britain in the mid-20th century, before modern town planning and the motor car had exerted their baneful influence on the landscape. Dividing the subject geographically, he covers six regions featuring a variety of scenes. He dwells on such forgotten pleasures as railway outing to the seaside and devotes a chapter to the artist and another to the collecting of carriage prints today. With this well-researched, often humorous narrative, biographies of the artists and comprehensive print listings, this book will appeal to railway enthusists and historians, art and antique collectors and anyone interested in pictures of a lost landscape during the era of steam.
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