Vintage Poster Archives
Keep the Hun Out 1917 | WW1 Propaganda Poster Ireland
Keep the Hun Out 1917 | WW1 Propaganda Poster Ireland
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A helmeted German soldier forces through a domestic window frame, rifle and fixed bayonet raised, orange flames rising behind him in the darkness. The low angle draws the viewer into close confrontation with the caricatured figure. Red slab-serif type dominates the top and foot: KEEP THE HUN OUT and BUY HOME PROTECTION WITH WAR SAVINGS STAMPS.
Designed by William Addison Ireland (1880–1935) and lithographed by the New-Columbus Lithograph Co. of Columbus, Ohio in 1917, this is the only recorded war poster by Ireland, who spent his career at The Columbus Dispatch as the editorial cartoonist behind the celebrated Sunday feature The Passing Show. The commission came from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, War Loan Organization, Savings Division. It belongs to the 'Bloodthirsty Hun' thread running through American WW1 home-front communication: the argument, carried in one image, that purchasing War Savings Stamps was an act of domestic defence. Ireland brought his cartooning instincts directly to the brief: thick outlines, theatrical anatomy, and a tight compositional pressure that has more in common with the editorial cartoon tradition than with the smoother illustration style of the period's better-known WW1 poster artists.
This giclée print is reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks. The natural-white, no-OBA stock preserves the warm cream ground, the saturated red letterforms, and the olive and orange tonal range of Ireland's original lithograph.
Resonates with collectors of American WW1 graphic history, students of the home-front propaganda tradition, and anyone following the cartooning lineage from Ireland through the editorial illustrators who defined the following generation.
