Cornwall, St Ives travel poster – Herbert Truman – 1938

Cornwall, St Ives poster – Herbert Truman -1938

In an era where relatively cheap air flights allow us to travel the globe, it can be difficult for us to understand what a huge impact the railways made in opening towns and cities across the length and breadth of Britain to be visited and holidayed in. Railway Posters were commissioned and produced by railway companies to advertise and promote their services to Tourist resorts.

This vintage St Ives railway poster was created for the Great Western Railway Company (GWR) in the 1930s by the artist Herbert Truman. Truman has created an idyllic scene at St Ives harbour. The website at cornwalls.com explains how important the harbour once was  “Once one of the most important pilchard landing ports in Cornwall the harbour would have been crammed full of fishing boats and the wharf side bustling with fish wives and traders”.

From the little girl watching the seagulls in the water and fisherman stood on the quayside to the boats in the water and the rolling hills and sandy beach in the background. He has also managed to include the lighthouse on the pier that was built in 1900. These days the harbour is still thriving and the quayside as busy as ever but fishing is no longer the main industry in St Ives. Tourism, in no small part, thanks to vintage railway posters like this, has taken over.

Cornwall was a railway destination that featured heavily in both Great Western Railways and British Railways poster output and many famous and less-well-known artists have created posters to get tourists to make the journey there by train. Artists such as Gyrth Russell, Jack Merriot, Arthur Wilcox, Alker Tripp, and Leonard Cusden to name but a few.

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 frame for a great price.