Posters

An extremely rare early linocut poster for the original Swedish release of the 1920 American silent comedy film The Slim Princess, starring Mabel Normand. Directed by Victor Schertzinger and believed to be a lost film, the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation production was based on a short story by George Ade about an unfashionably slim princess in a fictional country where fat is prized. Normand starred as the slender Princess Kalora of Morovenia who must be married off before her rotund younger sister can be wed. The farcical plot saw Normand disguised in an inflated rubber fat suit, until she sits on a pin and deflates to her normal size. Linocut printed in bold red and black, this elegant Art Deco style Swedish One Sheet poster for the picture presents a startlingly simple and modern appearance compared to the painterly American movie posters of the time, which were saturated with realistic detail and colour. The linocut printmaking technique is a variant of woodcut in which a sheet of linoleum is used for the relief surface. A design is cut into the linoleum surface, inked with a roller called a brayer, and then impressed onto the paper. As the technique favours flat planes of colour rather than texture and detail, the Swedish poster artists who employed this printing method created bold compositions of geometric shapes and sweeping curves, their dynamic designs standing out splendidly against single colour backgrounds. Exceedingly rare, these Swedish linocut posters were produced only for a short period of time until the early 1920s. This exquisite example is likely to be one of only a handful of surviving copies for this picture.

Condition

Excellent (A-)

Conservation backed on linen with no restoration. Some very light surface wear and creasing to folds in places. Original printer's ink stripes and smudges throughout, which only add to the charm of this hundred-year-old linocut print. A couple of tiny brown spots to margins. Image and colours otherwise excellent.