Thursday, March 09, 2006

M Ramus' Big World


This ad extolling the virtues of farm mechanization suits the time in which it appeared perfectly, and the choice of M Ramus to illustrate this concept should have been the ideal one... but fails to deliver to the same degree that his Shell ads do. Let's hope it was due to client interference, and not the fault of the illustrator. I have only a few examples of M Ramus' work, but his pleasing style and the sense of scale he brought to his compositions always caught my eye.

Ramus is another one of those illustrators who has left no trace of a biography, only a small body of work for advertising clients during the 50's - and this curious variation of style: throughout the 50's Ramus showed his cartoony side with a series of line illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post that are entirely unlike his painterly advertising style.

As well, a Google Image Search turned up this excellent war-time poster for The Women's Army Corps.

2 comments:

  1. I love the shadows from the clouds in the top piece. Nice.

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  2. You know, I hadn't even noticed that, Dom - but you're absolutely right. Nice indeed!

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