Date: 1918
Size: 32 x 47 inches
Artist: Marcel Falter
About The Poster: Produced in the final months of the war, this poster shows a French soldier engaged in a bitter struggle with the black imperial eagle of Germany. The Prussian eagle was used frequently by French poster artists to symbolize German savagery.
Here, the artist illustrates the horror of German occupation by adding a burning village, abandoned gun, and spiked German helmet to the background. The very real and desperate fight between French and German troops in August 1918 is dramatized here as a ferocious eagle bites and engulfs a French soldier, its large wings spreading beyond the border of the image. Walter Russell Bowie, an American Red Cross chaplain assigned to France during the war, wrote of this poster’s impact on the streets of France in 1918: “For many months France had been trying to drive the Germans back. For a long time she had been fighting that great, black eagle whose wings threw a shadow over all the land. France . .. had fought until it seemed as though all the strength of Frenchmen was exhausted, and as though it was not possible to try any more. But that poster was meant to make them remember that they must still keep on. There was to be one last, great try. The eagle was not yet choked. France must not let go until the work was finished.” (From the Boston Atheneum Digital Collection)
Linen backed and in excellent condition.