The Illustrious Albert Morrow: Posters, Postcards, and Pantomime
Albert Morrow (1863-1927) was an Irish illustrator of books and magazines as well as a prolific poster artist. He grew up in Belfast where he attended the Belfast Government School of Art and then the National Art Training School. His life and career are well-documented, for instance in this post by Robert J. Kirkpatrick, so I won’t say any more about it, except that he is credited with having designed hundreds of posters, just like E.P. Kinsella.
Charles Hyatt, in a fine essay on Christmas Pantomime posters for the Christmas double number of The Poster in 1898, compares Albert Morrow to Dudley Hardy and writes that “Mr. Albert Morrow’s very charming talent is seldom better employed than in the artistic advertisement of theatrical entertainments. Vivacious line, gay and alluring colour, and effective composition are characteristic of his best work. (…) Mr. Morrow has realised more and more perfectly the conditions essential to a poster if it is efficiently to perform its first business of advertising, so that, without appreciable sacrifice of artistic qualities, he is now able to achieve unequivocal success, from a a commercial standpoint.”
Most of Albert Morrow’s posters were also, like Kinsella’s, produced by David Allen in London, many of which were distributed also, again just like Kinsella’s, as postcards. You can find some examples below.
Answers
Albert Morrow designed a whole series of postcards for Answers, a British weekly paper that in 1906 reached a circulation of 830,000. This is perhaps the most interesting of those cards because it present us with an optical illusion. That woman’s eyes really do open if you look at them long enough.
Theatre Adverts
More theatre
Tea Rooms
This card is unsigned but I’m pretty sure it’s the work of Albert Morrow even though it does not promote a theatre production. Published by David Allen, like the rest of Morrow’s postcards.
