A 1920s railway poster of St Andrews is expected to sell for up to £8000 at auction next month.
The 30″x25″ poster was created around 1925 for the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) by English artist Henry George Gawthorn, then in his mid-40s, and is set to fetch £6000-£8000 at Christie’s South Kensington in London on November 5.
But these could be cautious estimates. When a similar 1920s St Andrews poster by Gawthorn, featuring the same ‘Home of the Royal and Ancient Game’ words, was sold at Christie’s in September 2002, it was expected to fetch £5000-£7000 but sold for £21,150 a world record for a Scottish travel poster.
The mix of golf, the steam railway era and Scotland is sometimes irresistible to vintage poster collectors.
In his book on railway art, Landscapes Under The Luggage Rack, Greg Norden says, “Gawthorn was born in 1879, became an architect but turned to pictorial art.” He died in 1941.
The St Andrews poster is among 343 vintage posters set to fetch over £500,000 at the auction.
