Jill Harness
37 Vintage Travel Posters From the Library of Congress
by Jill Harness - January 19, 2012 - 2:50 PM

While old travel posters still remind us why specific locations would make excellent vacation destinations, they also capture the popular artwork styles and values of the period in which they were made. Here are a few stunning vintage travel posters available through the Library of Congress, organized by artist.

Katherine Milhous: 1936-1941

Frank S. Nicholson: 1936-1940

Otis Shepard: 1935

Richard Halls: 1936-1938

J. Hirt: 1936-1939

Harry Herzog: 1936-1940

Jerome Henry Rothstein: 1936-1938

Martin Weitzman: 1936-1939

Alexander Dux: 1936-1939

Unknown Artists: 1936 -1939

While you may have noticed that the posters above are all creations of the same WPA project that was responsible for the zoo posters seen in an earlier post, the Library of Congress’ travel poster collection does feature a few international travel posters created outside of this project as well. Here are a few.

Leonetto Cappiello: 1901

Vittorio Grassi: 1920

Alicandri Roma: 1920

Geo Dorival: 1920

Allessandro Pomi: 1920

Unknown Artists:  1920-1951

For those of you who travel a lot, do you think these posters are accurate representations of their destinations, or are they a little too idealized for your tastes?

Lastly, there were a lot of people interested in purchasing the zoo posters, so anyone looking to grab one of these might want to check out Amazon or All Posters.com, as most of these can be found at one of the two sites. Just do a search for the text on the poster and you’ll most likely find the one you’re looking for.

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Comments (7)

  1. I collect the Ranger Naturalist Series prints from parks and monuments that I have visited and have available prints. They were a part of the WPA. I currently have around 12 of them, including all the ones shown here.

    posted by Andy in Tidewater on 1-19-2012 at 3:17 pm

  2. I would recommend, instead of Amazon or AllPosters, to just go to the library of congress website:

    http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

    and search for the pictures there. Most of them have high-resolution .tiff files you can download and send to be printed at FedEx/Kinko’s for a fraction of the price.

    posted by Terry on 1-19-2012 at 3:26 pm

  3. The prints by the WPA are actually serigraphs, their colours and stencils are from screen printing rather than a traditional painting or drawing.

    posted by Andy in Tidewater on 1-19-2012 at 3:30 pm

  4. Great Article.Wonderful pictures really nice

    posted by Andrew on 1-20-2012 at 7:55 am

  5. Dover Publications has these on CD, as part of some of their books of clipart. I’m not sure if they got them from the LoC or not — given their propensity for collecting and reprinting public domain works, probably. But it is nice to have them all neatly packed on a CD.

    posted by Worldwalker on 1-20-2012 at 5:33 pm

  6. I love vintage travel art. Have some hanging up at home.

    posted by Cole on 1-22-2012 at 8:25 pm

  7. Jerome Henry Rothstein’s poster is just awesome. It looks like a bit of a pain to purchase, but you can do so here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98518516/

    posted by Lucy on 1-25-2012 at 3:31 pm

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