Leslie Carr on the cover of “Morris Owner”

Images of motoring subjects made up the greater part of Leslie Carr’s output and he had a close relationship with Morris Motors, one of Britain’s most successful volume car manufacturers of the first half of the 20th. century. Morris Owner magazine was launched in 1924 to appeal to existing and prospective customers and in March 1925 Leslie Carr made his first appearance on the front cover.  Many more would follow (as many as 10 in 1926-27) and my selection of 5 is a very small part of his output. Sales were expanding rapidly in the post-war boom as more affordable vehicles attracted the middle class aspiring motorist. The 1920s was the decade of the open air motorist enjoying the freedom of the road in the pre-congestion era. Advertisers were beginning to learn the dark arts of selling dreams and the magazine covers served up a diet of bracing seaside picnics, following the local hunt down empty winding country roads, pitching a tent in deserted beauty spots, bluebell gathering in the woods - all the joys of the new found freedom that car ownership brings.  Carr was a remarkably versatile illustrator with the ability to adapt his style to suit any occasion, always with the support of outstanding drawing skills. A speciality was night scenes where the drama and excitement of contrasting pools of deep velvety darkness and incandescent flashes of artificial light are evoked to perfection. Picture editors recognised this and would routinely assign him to produce a cover for the prestigious Motor Show issues as seen here in 1928 and 1929. If I had to choose one it would be November 1929 where the composition is boldly divided by the angular form of the aircraft wing while the tightly drawn subject matter is confined to the lower third.

 

Leslie Carr illustrates "By Road, Rail, Air and Sea" (1931)

Fourteen years have passed since I last wrote about the illustrator and poster artist, Leslie Carr and noted the lack of online biographical information. That situation has changed and a lot more detail has emerged about his life and work. We now know he died in the town of his birth, Hove, in 1969 and in his last decade was employed as Art Director for The Motor magazine. In the First World War he served in the Tank Corps and during the Second World War he was a member of the Auxiliary Fire Service. Carr painted a series of paintings of wartime subjects based on his experiences, one of which sold at auction in 2018 for £16,000 after a pre-sale estimate of £200 to £400.

Today’s images come from a Blackie picture book for children published in 1931 titled By Road, Rail, Air and Sea for which Carr supplied the cover art and the majority of illustrations. The cover is a busy dockside scene in which all four transport types are combined in a single image in which areas of unmodified colour are enclosed by crisply incisive contours. In the spirit of the time he mostly employs a sachplakat style, to which he occasionally (and sometimes incongruously) adds some vigorous cross-hatching. Drawings are considered and precise with a subtle and inventive colour palette and at their most radical (the paddle-steamer) display a near-Japanese quality of repose. Examples of his poster work can be seen at Art UK and the Science and Society Picture Library.

 

Leslie Carr

Leslie Carr was an accomplished illustrator and poster artist active from the 1920s to the 1950s. Transport subjects were his speciality and his work can be viewed in the National Railway Museum and the London Transport Museum. Motoring, aviation and shipping also feature in his output. Many children’s books of the period included his thrilling evocations of the age of steam and this is a fine specimen. Examples of his vintage posters have been selling for up to £1,000 in recent months but despite his lasting achievements, biographical data is extremely sparse. There is a single source that gives his year of birth as 1891 but nothing accessible to support it. Perhaps in the future, the life and times of Leslie Carr will emerge from the lost pages of the historical record but I shan’t be holding my breath.