Onslows are pleased to announce the sale by auction of the Austin Reed collection of posters and original designs by the 1930's  British designer Tom Purvis on view at the Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, London SW10 on Tuesday 31st March 2009 between 2.00pm and 6.00pm and auctioned live on the internet through Liveauctioneers.com at our Dorset office on Thursday 2nd April at 3.00pm.

The collection number some twenty designs were for many years displayed in the firm’s flagship store in London’s Regents Street. Saleroom estimates range from £700 for an original design to £5000 for the finest posters. They will be sold together with two hundred lots of other Vintage posters.

Tom Purvis’s posters are some of the most sought after by collectors in the United States and Great Britain. In 1990 Onslows were fortunate enough to offer for auction the remaining contents of his studio, the sale set new records, with the beautiful London and North Eastern Railway’s Umbrella girl poster selling for a record £5500. Although he had died in 1959, his widow Jane had kept his posters, drawings and paint brushes in tact in his Oxfordshire studio.

In his day the professionals who commissioned work from Purvis regarded him as the supreme British master of poster art between the wars. He was known as "The King of the Hoardings". Tom Purvis was born in Bristol on the 12th June 1888, the son of a Master Mariner later to become a maritime artist. Purvis assisted his father preparing paints. The family was not wealthy but his father financed a first term at Camberwell School of Art, through winning scholarships he was able to stay the course. He studied under Sickert in London and Degas in Paris, the story goes that one day Sickert seized Purvis’s rubber and hurled it through a skylight telling him "bloody well draw". Later he learnt the trade with six years at Mather & Crowther  the advertising agency followed by a stint at the Avenue Press learning about lithography. His first independent poster was for Dewar's Whisky in 1907 when he only nineteen. He served with the Artist's Rifles in World War 1, which left him not the healthy man he had been before the war.

He designed many posters for the war effort, and covers for the London Magazine. He was now making his name as a poster artist and his Edwards' Soup poster "They're All In It! lead to further commissions. He was gradually developing his distinctive style of flat areas of brilliant colours laid next to each other without a dividing line. The finest designs he did are among those for Austin Reed, the London and North Eastern Railway and Shell. He was now a very successful poster designer adopting a business-like attitude and charging up to £250 for a design. In all his work Purvis was insistent on the closest co-operation with the client before a drawing was started. He would talk over the client's problem with extreme care and thoroughness and then patiently search for the best method of illustrating the "personality of the product" and the purpose of the campaign. An article in an issue Commercial Art in 1929 W D H McCullough , Advertising Manager for Austin Reed states "In whatever class the work is being used, it is the Austin Reed policy only to use the best obtainable. Probably the height of superb simplicity in modern men's wear art work is attained by the Underground posters by Tom Purvis.

Tom Purvis brought respectability to commercial art. He once said " I loathe the word artist. Personally I am proud of being called a Master Craftsman." In 1930 he was amongst a group of artists who banded together to form the Society of Industrial Artists, which brought pressure on the industry to improve standards for training and employment for commercial artists. He was one of the first Royal Designers for Industry in 1936, elected Master of the RDI in 1939. During World War 2 he was an official artist for the Ministry of Supply and firms including Rolls-Royce, he would often return home from the factories black after sketching workers. His famous wartime design (1940) for the National Savings poster "Lend to defend his right to be free" featured his son John aged 10. After the war he only did designs for Blackpool Pleasure Beech and one other for what had now become British Railways. It seems that in the post war austerity his colourful and provocative posters had no place and were no longer in demand or maybe he had lost his way ? Now a Roman Catholic he turned to painting portraits and religious subjects. He was never content thinking he could have done better. Money had no real meaning to him, he was one of quiet generosity, it was said of him that having received a payment for a commission in the morning, by lunch time he had given it all away