 Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
This is famed marine painter, Walter Thomas (1894-1971) at his best, in the inaugural poster to introduce Cunard's Canadian Service in 1921 with sister ships RMS Antonia, Andania, Aurania (III), and Ausonia. Walter portrays Antonia off Quebec as she leaves port going back to Britain to get another load of immigrants for Canada. Walter has chosen the perfect angle to show the towering might of a ship that inspires confidence. He compounds the effect by placing smaller tugs and boats, and tiny figures, in the foreground to give the eye comparison. The viewer is lulled into thinking, surely something so huge could never sink... Which is why Cunard paid him handsomely for his paintings of their liners. It would bring in passengers... |
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| Cunard Line, Canadian Service - Walter Thomas, 1921 | |
| Orig. chromolithograph - Image Size - 50 x 69cm Found - Barrie, On |
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
Like most postcards this is a photomechanical reproduction. But for one family it is a priceless treasure... The original log of the ocean voyage of the Goldi Family, on RMS Scythia, from Le Havre, France, from Dec. 8, 1950 to Dec. 15, 1950. It was dark when the ship docked at Pier 21 (blue below.) Instead of going ashore we all went to the ship's dining room for the Last Supper. 60 years later it is still hard to put into words the wild excitement of being caught up in the lights playing about the crazy melee of people crowding about on deck at night to gaze on the concrete splendour of Pier 21. Where we all nuts or what? No, we were all caught up in a wild dream and that was CANADA. And Scythia had brought us here safe and sound... To see what happened to a typical Canadian immigrant family after they docked at the historic (blue) Pier #21 at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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| Abstract Log of RMS Scythia Voyage, Dec. 8-15,1950 | ||
| Orig. card - Size - 10 x 17 cm Found - Prov - Family |
| Don't be a dupe... use a loupe... | |
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Original Prints - There are many ways to define "original" and "print" in the art world, many being pedantic or academic. We mean original print in the sense of "unaltered antique original print" as understood by the average collector. Original to Date - It has to be original in manufacture to the time period it - and not the dealer - claims to be from: the Leitch and McClellan from 1862; the Webber from 1784; the Fildes from 1905.) Hand Crafted - Each actual print has to have been personally hand crafted by one or more artists from the same time period, involving either manual pressing, sketching, or painting of that very piece of paper. Unaltered - Later copies, or later painting, which alters the state of the "original print" regardless of how well it is done, do not qualify any more as true "original prints." |
Repro you dupe... In the postcard , you are seeing only a photographic mechanical reproduction of the photo below, not the real photo emulsion itself. Recopying the original surface mechanically - either the photo emulsion, or an original painting or print - with a camera and then creating a copy with a machine printer, creates and superimposes the grid of dots on the image. |
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The Eyes have it... Left the flag from the Aquitania chromolithograph hugely magnified, shows no uniform pattern, or grid of rows of dots, like those that entirely cover the crowsnest from the ship's photomechanically reproduced photo postcard right. That's why images made as chromolithographs are considered original prints - and valuable - and the postcard copy, a reproduction or repro - and cheap.
The loupe tells the tale. This is an unhybridized chromolithograph, showing only the irregular stippling only possible from a lithostone pressing.
Below the sky patch at the top middle of the print - where the lithographer would have held the print - appear to be finger prints.
Below the bow wave, and a huge blow up of the flag buried in the smoke from the funnel of the passing ship.
This fabulous chromolithograph shows no ill effects from being badly treated for the past 100 years that it has sat in this frame. The glass is wavy and the cardboard backing could tell a story if it could talk.
The paper backing that once covered the entire back of the print has rotted away decades ago. The cardboard has shrunk and the nails have gouged holes from being shaken during the countless trips this print has taken in its life. After all, few human beings are as old as this print.
Luckily the print is mounted on a stiff backing so the acidic staining that has damaged so many antique prints is entirely absent here.
To protect them from further deterioration you should take prints like this apart, clean the glass - water and newspaper - and the print, front and back.
We use fresh white bread - the only possible use for this unnourishing foodstuff. We press the soft centre into all areas of the print, frequently changing slices to preserve the stickiness to absorb dust and crud particles. Then we wipe it all with a new swiffer. We provide a new acid free foam core.
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
Called the most successful liner ever she held the record for years in service - 36, from 1914 to 1950 - only surpassed by the QE2 - also a Cunarder - with 40. She started service early in 1914, just months before World War I began, as one of Cunard's trio of huge four-funnel liners (plus Mauretania and Lusitania) to challenge the White Star Line's Olympic, whose sister ship Titanic had sunk in 1912. Instead, she was pressed into serving as a troop ship. She brought troops to the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. With the return of peace she became a trans Atlantic liner. ferrying movie stars, the rich, and immigrants between Europe and America. In World War II, she again became a troopship and miraculously escaped, again, the attention of submariners who claimed so many other passenger liners. After the war she resumed her Canadian service, under charter to the Canadian government, bringing thousands of immigrants, war brides and their children, to Canada. It was her final assignment. She was broken up in 1950. |
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| RMS Aquitania, Cunard Line - c 1914 | |
| Orig. chromolithograph - Image Size - 71 cm x 1.01 m Found - Ottawa, ON |
A Rare Original Print
99% of colour prints - including all the art prints - in the last 100 years have been photomechanically reproduced, because it is not economical to do any other way. The first were produced late in the 19th century and typically show a grid of dots when looked at with a loupe.
We have discovered a rare print that American museum experts told us they have not been aware of before - a hybrid, part chromolithograph, part photomechanical reproduction.
We discovered it by using a loupe on various parts of the print and discovered that the grid of dots was interrupted in various places by dotless patches of colour. It appears that the original photomechanically reproduced image was then pressed by a craftsman on to a litho stone to take up additional colours and give the image an additional depth and variety of colour it did not have.
Below the ships main mast and the hull of the vessel seem to be among the main areas treated by the partial chromolithograph treatment.
Some of the waves also received patches of colour that has overlaid the pattern of dots that lie underneath.
It stands to reason that this transitional print would have been attempted to blend the benefits of both old and new technologies.But in the end this extra hand treatment was abandoned too, in deference to economics.
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
One of the many post-World War I Canadian liners put into service after four years of terrible war, she was on the Vancouver - Yokohama Pacific run (1922-1926) before being switched to the Quebec-Southampton Atlantic service (1926-1939). She ended her days as a troop ship during and after World War II, before being scrapped in 1952. She is shown in her original colours of black hull, white tops, and buff funnels and masts, as she was during the Yokohama service. During the Quebec years her hull was repainted white She was a superb ambassador for Canada as a nation of humanitarian peace-keepers in an era that saw many huge passenger ships proudly carrying Canadian flags into ports around the world. But those storied Great Canadian passenger ships are all gone now.
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| Empress of Australia, Canadian Pacific Line - Leonard Richmond, 1922 | |
Orig. chromolithograph - Image Size - 61 x 71 cm A masterpiece by famed marine painter Leonard Richmond |
In a sad departure from a noble tradition, today only Canadian war ships enter foreign ports, and everyone knows they are on the way to bring over 20 billion dollars of guns, ammunition, and war materiel to help kill Muslim men, women, and children in Afghanistan.Halifax, Nova Scotia - The Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow
For well over a century the Cunard ships dropped off hundreds of thousands of hopeful immigrants here in Halifax, about a million alone, at the blue Pier #21. Thousands of unhappy war brides and many abused-to-be British children also stepped off on the pier during World War II.
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Cunard RMS Antonia 1922
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Cunard RMS Scythia 1922
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A Close up to die for... Proof positive that this is an original print, a one-of-a-kind chromolithograph that was individually hand-inked on to a litho stone and printed by a skilled craftsman and is not a photomechanical repro. A jeweler's loupe tells the tale, showing an extreme close up of how both images are constructed. Below where the bow of the Antonia meets the water. Even with this huge magnification - the size of a pinhead on the picture above - there is only the evidence of panels of paint and pitting from the stone surface as the paper was pressed on to the various litho stones carrying the colour impressions that made up the image.
There are only the coloured dots and graving tool strokes from the litho stone here, no superimposed, uniform grid pattern that belie a photomechanically reproduced print. The number of colours used and the gradations of hue are almost infinite. At 29 x 39 inches worth having for display. This image has recently been reproduced by the photomechanical process used to make the postcard right. The value of a same size reproduction print drops in value. |
Nice, but... The same magnification on this picture - of the masts on the sailing ship at the rear of the liner - shows the tell tale uniform grid pattern that tells you this image was cheaply reproduced by a photomechanical process that put the colour on the paper with a fast press with the help of half tone screens to apply magenta, cyan, red, and black. Only a mix of three colours and black are used in this process by which 99% of modern colour pictures have been reproduced in the last 100 years.
The colour intensity, and variety are just no match for a chromolithograph. But it's just too expensive to hand-make these prints today. (Robert Bateman "prints" are photomechanical reproductions.) Nice... 90 years old, but not hand produced and one of thousands... Still it is a treasured memento of a part of Canada's history. It was sold aboard ship during the voyage. So it heard the throb of the engines, and the excited chatter of immigrants as they abandon their old homeland and prepare for a new life somewhere in Canada. A postcard view worth some $4... |
Two fabulous antique ocean liner pictures... Guess which one is far more valuable... and why?
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
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| Sheet Music, Siege of Ladysmith - 1900 | |
Orig. souvenir ware - Size - 17 cm |
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
This fine plate was bought aboard the Lusitania on her last completed voyage and has been in a Canadian estate since then. Memorabilia of the great liners is highly prized. Memorabilia like this, from the famous ill-fated liners is impossible to find at any price.
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| Souvenir Plate, RMS Lusitania - 1915 | |||
| Orig. plate - Size - 23 cm Found - Hamilton, ON |
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
In 1907 she took the Blue Riband for fastest ocean crossing from the German liners who had held the speed record for ten years. The Lucy and the Mauretania would swap the title for fastest western passage over the next few years. When World War I started the Lucy continued to travel between Britain and the US, which was a neutral from 1914 till 1917. Since the British government had agreed to put money into Lusitania in 1905, on the understanding that, in wartime, the Lucy would be converted to become an armed merchant cruiser, this was done. Cunard's passenger liner Carmania top had already attacked and sunk a German converted liner the Cap Trafalgar in 1914. Still there was great and unctuous outrage when a U-boat sank the Lucy off Ireland in 1915. Dastardly Germans - "Huns" they called them - sinking an innocent passenger ship. The huge loss of life made this sinking unusual, and especially a volatile issue, and the hundred Americans who died came in handy to turn the US public against Germans and ultimately bring America into the war on the Allied side. |
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| Sheet Music, Lusitania Two-Step - 1908 | |
| Orig. plate - Size - 26 x 35 cm Found - Brantford, ON |
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
She had sister ships Alaunia, and Aurania. Andania's maiden voyage, in July 1913, was to Quebec and Montreal, Canada. During World War I Andania carried troops to the Gallipoli campaign. She also carried many Canadian troops. She was sunk off Ireland by a German submarine in January 1918. All but seven crew members survived the sinking. Much has been made of supposed "innocent passenger ships" being targetted by U-boats in World War I. But they were armed warships, and many carried war materiel to Europe, like Lusitania. |
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| Cunard Line, Canadian Service - Sam JM Brown, 1913 | |
| Orig. chromolithograph - Image Size - 60 x 85 cm Found - Montreal, PQ |
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
She was noted for her glitzy accommodation in First Class, and immediately took the Blue Riband for fastest eastern crossing of the Atlantic, from New York to Britain. She would lose her Blue Riband in 1907 to the new Cunarder Lusitania. The outbreak of war found her isolated in neutral New York. When the US entered the war it impounded her, renamed her Agamemnon and used her as a troop transport. She ended her days as a US navy ship which saw little use and was broken up in 1940, a sad end for one of the great liners and fastest ships of her day. |
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| Jig Saw Puzzle, Kaiser Wilhelm II - 1904 | |
| Orig. cardboard - Size - 37 x 52 cm Found - Whycocomagh, NS |
Below the Cap Trafalgar in happier days.
Right sinking in the background as Carmania pounds her. Some 50 Germans died including the Captain.
| Great Canadian Heritage Treasure |
When launched in 1905 Caronia and Carmania were the largest Cunard ships and two of the fastest in the world. They served on the north Atlantic run and both brought passengers to Quebec. Both were armed as merchant cruisers in World War I and served as troopships. (British liners of the period, like the ill-fated Lusitania (launched 1906) were actually designed to be used as armed warships in case of conflict.) Carmania (illustrated - she had tall yellow forward deck ventilator cowls the Caronia lacked) sank the similarly armed German liner Cap Trafalgar in 1914. She took troops to assist at Gallipoli and, after the war, took troops back to Canada. Both continued to transport passengers on the north Atlantic run, including to Canada, till broken up in 1932. |
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| Cunard Line, Canadian Service (RMS Carmania) - Sam JM Brown 1905 | |
| Orig. chromolithograph - Image Size - 76 x 99 cm Found - Elora, ON |
3 - The wharf along which Normandie, and countless other great liners, like Ile de France, France and Paris, also docked as shown below.
I was in Le Havre harbour (France), as a nine-year-old, in December 1950, and remember gazing in awe when my father pointed out the Liberté (twin funnels above and below) as the great liner, horn blaring, swept out of the harbour, bound for New York. (Below Liberté at the very Le Havre dock from which I had watched her depart a few years earlier.)
