Critical analysis.

(A) - "The Uncle Sam Range" by Shumacher & Ettlinger.

(B) - “Dady, what did you do in the Great War?” by Savile Lumley

Now I will try to analyse and compare two illustrations: "The Uncle Sam Range" - published by Shumacher & Ettlinger (further "A") and illustration by Savile Lumley - “Dady, what did you do in the Great War?” (further "B"). And interpret their artistic and semantic sides.

First of all I want to say few words about the style of pictures. There is a text on them. And the way how the font fitted in the pictures are different. On the "A" all the words exist as a part of the whole image. They like drawn on the floor, papers and on the table cover. But what we can see on the "B" is just phrase written above the picture. It looks more separatly. But both textes on the images equally expressive. And siuts the images styles. Colour scheme on the “A” is colder, that giving us sense of official atmosphere. But the colours on the “B” much warmer and creates home cosiness atmosphere. All the people are dressed peculiar to the time they living at. On the “A” there is one fictional character personifying the earth with its habitants. On the “B” there is no fable. Both illiustrations have central composition. I think that this two pieces were produced for a wide audience and were published in a newspaper or in a maganize. Dispite of the target of both pictures the meaning of them are not very relative.

On the piece "A" meaning is more common and advertising, it just appeals people to buy the stoves. But the presence of plenty American symbolics makes attention on the American spirit and creates official atmosphere. This shows us the size of patential market. Seems that Uncle Sam wants his stoves to become the common property of Americans and people from all over the world. When the picture "B" appeals people to think about some global problems, such as war and its after-effects. This piece of art has the national spirit too, even without all those flags and symbolics. But this nationalism has different conext. All its meaning includes phrase on the picture – “Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?”. This words make people thinking about patriotism and wants them to be involved to the actions for the sake of their country and nation. It is very important to put attention on the time when both pictures where produced: A - 1876 year (which is actually before the Great War), B – 1915 year (directly during the war).

If we compare the gestures, facial expressions and gazes on the both images we could see how does things like a war changes the people and their common live. On the "A" all the people seems to be happy with the new stove they got and the only thing they worry about is how they could sell it to the whole world. But on the “B” you could see a little child playing with the toy-army. In this comparison we could see the change of the social values and moods over the time.

My opinion that images has both : strong technical performance and present-day meaning for particular time in the history. I would like to see other works of this authors.