2e Emprunt de Défense Nationale
Artist
Jules Abel Faivre
France, 1867 - 1945
Printer
Imp. Devambez, Paris.
France
Date1916
Dimensions44 1/4 x 31 in. (112.4 x 78.7 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.152
DescriptionThis simple poster encourages French civilians to invest in the second of four major national loan campaigns organized by the government during World War I and is probably the most famous French war poster of this era. Jules Abel Faivre focuses on a French “poilu” (infantryman) with a gun in one hand, the other raised as he looks back to urge his comrades on. “We’ll get them!” were the fighting words uttered by General Phillipe Pétain at the Battle of Verdun, a hard-won French victory achieved in 1916, the year the poster was issued. The soldier’s pose echoes that of François Rude’s “Victory” on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, thus evoking past French military glories while asserting the military might of the ordinary fighting man. Faivre was one of the best-known cartoonists and war poster artists of his time, and like many of his contemporaries who had studied in traditional art schools like the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, his compositions reflect a rigorous formal training in drawing the human figure. The soldier here is set against a blank ground as if he has been sketched in a drawing studio rather than on the battlefield. This image was reused in various guises in France, in Italy, and in the United States on a 1943 poster with the slogan “We have just begun to fight!”On View
Not on view
