Souscrivons à l'Emprunt de la Victoire
Artist
Frank Lucien Nicolet
Date1918
Dimensions24 x 35 in. (61 x 88.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Peter A. Blatz
Object numberPH.84
DescriptionOnce Britain went to war with Germany on August 5, 1914, Canada, as a dominion of the British Empire, was automatically at war too. The Canadian government sold war bonds to private corporations, various organizations, and Canadian civilians in five different campaigns between 1915 and 1919 to raise funds for the war effort. Each “Victory Bond” release involved a poster campaign organized by the Victory Loan Publicity Committee. In 1916, the government introduced the War Poster Service to produce identical posters in both French and English, the country’s two main languages. Some unique posters were issued only in French. Frank Lucien Nicolet’s design here was also published in two variants, this one with French text and the other with a slightly different English text. He describes a Canadian soldier in a field of poppies, his head bowed before a white cross marking the grave of a fallen comrade. Ruined buildings can be seen in the background. The text of the English-language variant includes words from the last stanza of the 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae, a Canadian military surgeon: “If ye break faith — we shall not sleep.” The image evokes the famous first lines of this poem “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses row on row…”; it was published in Punch and ultimately led to the adoption of the poppy as the official flower of remembrance for the British and Commonwealth dead.On View
Not on view
