... Something to do with Lease-Lend, I expect ...

(click image to enlarge)

... Something to do with Lease-Lend, I expect ...

Rowland Emett (1906-1990)

Price

£4,500

Signed

Signed

Medium

Ink and watercolour

Dimensions

9 ¼ x 10 ½ inches

Illustrated

Punch, 31 March 1943, Page 262;
Sidings, & suchlike. explored by Emett, London: Faber & Faber, 1946 [unpaginated];
The Early Morning Milk Train. The Cream of Emett Railway Drawings, London: John Murray, 1976 [unpaginated]

Exhibited

'A Century of British Art: 1945-2010', Chris Beetles Gallery, London, October-November 2021, no 243

American Influence in the United Kingdom during the Second World War
Providing two glorious variations on the stereotypical British view of Americans, these cartoons were published soon after the United States had entered the western campaign of the Second World War in November 1942.

The caption of the first cartoon mentions the Lend-Lease policy, enacted in 1941, under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom and other allied nations with food, oil and equipment, including weapons. Though it did supply railway locomotives, they went mainly to the Soviet Union. The cartoon suggests that, had they come to the UK, they might have looked like something straight out of a Western, complete with marauding Red Indians' disturbing the peace of Bishops Snoring.
After a lull, the Western film genre had seen something of a revival in 1939, with major studio productions that included Cecil B De Mille's Union Pacific, which concerned the building of the transcontinental railroad. The film and the posters that advertised it may have directly inspired Rowland Emett to produce this cartoon.