American Junior Red Cross/Lighting the Way to Service and Good Will
Artist
Anna Milo Upjohn
Printer
Forbes, Boston
United States
Datec. 1919
Dimensions29 1/2 x 19 1/2 in. (74.9 x 49.5 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.184
DescriptionThis poster promotes the international work of the American Junior Red Cross (JRC), established by the federal government in September 1917 to aid civilians in wartime. The carefully delineated forms of the children here, whose different nationalities and ethnicities are suggested by their clothing, point to American painter and illustrator Anna Milo Upjohn’s formal artistic training in Europe before the war and especially to her work as a portrait artist. At the outbreak of war in 1914, Upjohn was in France and immediately volunteered for relief work there. In 1918, she was hired by the Children’s Bureau of the American Red Cross to design a series of posters to promote its work and in 1919 began to make paintings and drawings for the JRC as she visited it at work in the war-torn countries of Europe; in 1921, she became the staff artist for the JRC, illustrating numerous posters like this one.On View
Not on view
