Winter Autograph, Art and Sports Auction
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/26/2015
James Montgomery Flagg was an illustrator, best remembered for his Uncle Sam "I Want You" poster,first done in WW1 which was among the 46 war-related posters he created between 1917 and 1919. He was a child prodigy who was contributing illustrations to magazines at the age of 12. He studied art in New York, England and Paris.He repeated his figure of Uncle Sam for the World War II poster, "Uncle Sam" and the "Red Cross Nurse," which he created in 1942 in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and our subsequent entry into the war. Congress adopted "Uncle Sam" as a national symbol in 1961, largely to the credit of Flagg's illustration. He was also a capable portrait painter and exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1900, at the National Academy of Design, and the New York Watercolor Club. In 1980, he was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. Presented here is a Flagg portrait with an accompanying signed dialog. These works were obviously done during wartime (as the text piece would talked about hiding in a fox hole, but we can't be too sure of which war, most likely WW2). The illustration (multi-media on paper, signed with artist's initials in the bottom right) depicts a severely aged aristocratic matron, and the fully-signed humorous dialog tells a short tale of the aristocrat's visit by a young woman and her photographer companion. Both are matted together in a single frame, with the illustration's visible area measuring 7-1/2" x 9"
James Montgomery Flagg Original Illustration
Click above for larger image.