The Ships are Coming – United States Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation

Description

Of the numerous poster campaigns of the Great War, the posters designed for the Shipping Board were cited as "the most artistic group as a whole that came from American studios during the war," receiving admiration from critics and public alike for their beauty as well as their power to inspire the workers in America and instill patriotism on the home front. In particular, those posters designed by James H. Daugherty for this campaign received special praise. In this poster the artist--later to become famous as a painter, muralist, book illustrator and author-- concentrates on recruiting manpower for the American shipbuilding industry, vital to the war effort and critically shorthanded at the beginning of the war. The image, an expressive rendition of the American eagle leading American ships across the ocean to Europe, owes some of its dynamism to the influence of Frank Brangwyn, the British artist, with whom Daugherty had studied in London before the outbreak of the war. The intensity of this work lies in both its subject and execution, for Daugherty expressively transforms the symbolic American eagle, employed to evoke patriotic associations, into a frightening symbol of power and accusation. The effect is heightened by the placement of the eagle's eye into direct confrontation with the viewer and by the consistent use of bright, contrasting colors as in the violet sun which becomes a fiery furnace of battle. The intensity of Daugherty's personal handwriting and the power of the image is still capable of stirring one's emotions today.