I have stacks of old postcards each one a small glimpse in the past for I had been collecting them for years.
This brief correspondence of a bygone age becomes the property of a reader voyeur often tells the true story many years later.
The were many of France in WW1 when hundreds of thousands of cards were sent home to loved ones all over the world.
I have one which is very precious as it it is from an Australian aboriginal soldier sent to his girlfriend Doris at home on which he writes: "On leave in Paris with friend I saw you at the station, better than a picture. Tell you about it when I get home and we are wed. Tommy.
I have been to Paris many times and it dawned on me what he meant for he had probably arrived at the old Gare'd"Orsay railway station now a museum where there are four statues of each of the races of mankind depicted by women; one of which was Oceania showing as an Australian Aboriginal woman with a kangaroo by her side.
Much later after a lot of digging in the war records that I found that Private Tommy Karpany hadn't returned back home to Australia to fulfill his dreams with Doris but had stayed on in a battlefield in France.
Image found at www.eurohistoryprof.blogspot.com
Thank you for the world so sweet
Margaret Tarrant (1888 – 1959) was an artist specializing in
depictions of fairy-like children and religious subjects. She began her career
at the age of 20, and painted and published into the early 1950s. She was known
for her children's books, postcards, calendars, and print reproductions.
Tarrant was born in London and trained as a teacher, but turned
to illustrative art instead. Her first major work was illustrating Charles Kingsley’s
book “The Water Babies” when she was 20. Apart from writing and illustrating her own books on
fairies she was also a prolific postcard artist.
Postcard from author's collection
Leaving youth behind
She is on an adventure
Being a woman
William Barribal was a postcard artist in the first half of the 20th
century and specialised in pretty girls often daring for the period between the
two world wars. He used his wife as his model however the
range of girls illustrated would indicate that he was surrounded by pretty
women although in the postcard illustration above it almost certainly is her.
His range of subjects ranged from wartime humour to provocative scenes on
the beach and a fair smattering of children’s portraits, as well as Military
themes right through the 2nd World War when patriotic fervour was a
favourite subject to keep morale high in war torn Britain.
I chose this postcard to illustrate this post as the girls eyes are the
feature that are smiling and illustrate the beauty and promise of youth that
was Barribal’s forte.
Illustration from author's own postcard collection
