Page:Picture Posters.djvu/225

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CHAPTER VII.

THE PICTORIAL POSTER IN ENGLAND: THE WORK OF DUDLEY HARDY, AUBREY BEARDSLEY, AND MAURICE GREIFFENHAGEN.

The English artists of established reputation with whom I dealt in the last chapter, were, as we saw, so anxious to inform their posters with æsthetic qualities, that for the most part, they overlooked the obvious fact that their work was vain unless it really fulfilled its primary purpose of advertising. It was left for the three men (all of comparatively recent reputation) whose names head this chapter, to give the right direction; to insist that not art, but advertisement, was the first essential. It is not for an instant to be pretended that their achieve­ment equals in importance that of the three designers discussed in a corresponding chapter in the section of this book devoted to France. Quantity of production, it is true, is a small matter in art; and yet, in so far as quantity of production entails experience, one is forced to take it into con-