This marvellous poster is to be offered for sale by auction on December 10^th 2010, this rare modernist design by Philip Zec, published in 1932 was his only design for the forward thinking London and North Eastern Railway Company who employed some of the finest commercial designers of the day.

The design is in first place to break our own record price for a British railway poster.  “By Night Train to Scotland” showing the Flying Scotsman at speed on an atmospheric moonlit night, it is estimated to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000. The current record for a poster from this genre is for the LNER poster “The Night Scotsman” by Russian émigré Alexander Alexeieff   which sold in 1996 for £10,000.

The poster is one from a superb collection which recently came to the market from a deceased estate. The sale includes some of the very finest railway posters we have offered in recent years. Please have a look at our auction preview pages for a flavour of what’s to come.

Biography and notes on the artist.

Zec was born in Russia in 1909 to a family who was soon to flee Tsarist oppression settling in London before the First World War. At thirteen the young Philip won a Scholarship to St Martin’s School of Art, on graduating he joined Arks Publicity an advertising agency, later setting up his own commercial art studio working for agencies including J Walter Thompson, which is when the railway poster was commissioned. In 1930’s and during the Second World War he worked as the political cartoonist for the Daily Mirror, some of his wartime cartoons caused great embarrassment to the Government. Zec had no previous experience of drawing cartoons but was hired by H.G. Bartholemew and given complete creative freedom without editorial censorship. Working alongside Connor, who went under the pen-name “Cassandra”, Zec was to provide cartoons to accompany “Cassandra’s” column. With Connor occasionally providing captions for Zec’s drawings, the outbreak of war in 1939 provided the dominant influence in his work during this period. Unlike the early war time cartoons of Low and others, Zec depicted the Nazi’s as snakes and vultures, implying a sinister side in contrast to the ‘buffoons’ drawn by his peers.  Commentators have since ascribed this approach to a strong anti-Nazi sentiment borne out of Zec’s Jewish ancestry.  It is said the feeling was mutual and that Hitler had placed Zec on his ‘black list’ of individuals to be arrested following an invasion of Britain.

Zec’s most infamous illustration was published in the Daily Mirror in 1942 and caused a political furore which threatened the existence of the newspaper and caused him to be labelled a traitor. Appearing in the 6 March 1942 edition, the cartoon featured a merchant seaman adrift in rough waters clinging to the remains of a ship, apparently torpedoed by a German submarine. Beneath the picture, the caption read: “The price of petrol has been increased by one penny’ – Official.” One of a series of pieces attacking profiteers,  the original caption penned by Zec was to have been "Petrol is Dearer Now."  According to Zec, the cartoon was intended to illustrate that wasting fuel had serious consequences in terms of the risks taken (and the lives lost) by sailors bringing it to the country. William Connor suggested the revised caption, believing Zec’s effort lacked impact.  Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Supply Herbert Morrison along with others in the government were outraged. They interpreted the cartoon as a comment that petrol companies were deliberately profiting at the expense of British lives - particularly those in the merchant navy.  Churchill called on MI5 to investigate Zec's background, which revealed nothing more sinister than the fact he had left-wing sympathies and found no evidence of him being involved in subversion. At the same time the Mirror’s register of shareholders was investigated to consider whether the paper should be shut down. The matter was debated in the House of Commons and, after MPs urged caution, the government settled on a severe reprimand. Three years later, Zec’s VE Day contribution was widely acclaimed. Depicting a wounded soldier handing over a laurel representing victory and peace in Europe, the caption read “Here you are. Don't lose it again!”   His most famous poster of WW2 was “Women of Britain Come into the factories”  published in 1942 it could not be more different in style than the railway poster on offer. It seems to evoke and is influenced by the interwar era of the Russian communist party posters.

After the war Zec became a director of the Daily Mirror. Between 1950 and 1952 he was employed as editor of the Sunday Pictorial while continuing to draw for the Daily Mirror until 1954. In 1958 he left the Mirror Group and worked for the Daily Herald until 1961, and then as art director on the Jewish Chronicle and editor of New Europe.  Becoming blind in later life, Philip Zec died in Middlesex Hospital, London, on 14 July 1983.