John Hassall

JOHN HASSALL (Walmer, 1868 - London, 1948).
"Aladdin."
Lithograph poster on paper.
Signed in plate.
Measurements: 74.5 x 61 cm; 80 x 57 cm (frame).

John Hassall was an English painter, illustrator, woodcutter and poster artist. He was educated at Worthing, Newton Abbot College and Neuenheim College, Heidelberg. At the suggestion of a friend, he studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and the Académie Julien in Paris. During this time he was influenced by the famous poster artist Alphonse Mucha. His first drawings appeared in 1890 in The Daily Telegraph. In 1895 he began working as an advertising artist for David Allen & Sons, a job he held for fifty years and included such well-known projects as the poster Skegness Is Done (1908). He made use of flat colors bounded by thick lines in black, his poster style was well suited to children's books, and he produced many volumes of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. In 1901 Hassall was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Watercolor Painters and the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. He also belonged to several social clubs, including the Langham (until 1898), and most notably, the London Sketch Club (of which he was president from 1903 to 1904). In 1900 Hassall opened his own "School of New Art and the School of Poster Design" in Kensington, where he counted Bert Thomas, Bruce Bairnsfather, HM Bateman and Harry Rountree among his pupils. The school was closed by the outbreak of the First World War. In the post-war period, he ran a correspondence school. He was the father of poet Christopher Hassall and engraver Joan Hassall. He was also the grandfather of actress Imogen Hassall. Arguably John Hassall's most famous creation was the 1908 Jolly Fisherman and is considered one of the most famous vacation advertisements of all time in England. In the National Art Museum of Catalonia you can see one of his works, a poster he made for his friend Lluís Plandiura, on the occasion of the inauguration of a Poster Exhibition at the Círculo Artístico.