Charles I 1625-1649 Underground Poster – Austin Cooper – 1931

Charles I 1625-1649 Underground Poster Richmond Park – Austin Cooper – 1931

This superb vintage Underground poster was illustrated by the popular poster artist Austin Cooper. The poster was one in a series of  London Transport posters to advertise the newly organised company brands for London Transport. Each of the posters features a historical British monarch. One poster features Queen Elizabeth I for the General bus company, another features Henry VIII promoting Tramways and this poster features an image of King Charles I. This one presented the Underground group. The artist Cooper has used the famous Anthony van Dyck painting Charles I at the Hunt as the inspiration for Charles’ pose. Van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who through Charles I, became the leading court painter in England.

The poster reads, Visit the Royal Deer Park. Established by the King 1635. Richmond Park by Underground.

In 1625, King Charles, escaping the Great Plague plague, made a visit to Richmond. He realised the large area of open grassland would provide him with excellent opportunities to hunt near London. At the time the land supported small farms, and the common land was a place where local people had the right to graze their cattle or livestock and collect timber from the trees. None of this mattered to Charles. He built an eight-mile wall around the area and introduced 2,000 deer to the area and proceeded to hunt. The local community was quite rightly angry about the King’s action. In the end, he was forced to pay compensation to some landowners and had to restore the right of people to walk in the park and collect firewood.

Our posters are carefully and professionally created from vintage originals. Whilst great care is taken in the production of these posters, we also try to maintain a vintage feel, so there may be small imperfections, fold marks, scuffs, tears or marks that were part of the original poster master. If these do appear they should be visible on the larger views of the item on this listing. The originals of many of the posters we offer can cost many thousands of pounds, so whilst these posters look great, especially framed and mounted on a wall, they are intended as fun, affordable reproductions and not intended fine art prints.

The 50x70cm version has been specially produced to be used in conjunction with Ikea’s 50x70cm Ribba picture frame which currently retails for around £12. So you can bag a bargain of print and poster for just £22.