RAILWAY CHILDREN

Original British 30 inch x 40 inch Quad Poster for the 1970 Lionel Jeffries Drama THE RAILWAY CHILDREN, based on the novel by E. Nesbit and starring Jenny Agutter, Dinah Sheridan, Bernard Cribbins, William Mervyn, Iain Cuthbertson, Sally Thomsett, Gary Warren and David Lodge.

Jeffries turned writer/director for this delightful version of E. Nesbit’s Edwardian children’s classic about the adventures of Agutter, Thomset and Warren on the local railway line while trying to clear their father Cuthebertson who is serving a prison sentence for spying.

Poster art by Arnaldo Putzu (1927 – 2012).

After studying art in Rome Arnaldo Putzu met poster artist Enrico de Seta in 1948 whilst doing illustration work in Milan. De Seta took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming post-war Italian film industry. In the early 1950s Putzu went freelance working for, among others, Augusto Favalli, a fine artist who had set up a commercial studio in 1946 employing several artists and collaborating with the production company Lux Film.

Around the same time John Davis of the Rank Organisation asked Eric Pulford, then creative head of Rank’s Downton Advertising, to produce some special brochures for their Italian office. Pulford flew out to Rome and worked alongside Augusto Favalli and his team of artists. When Favalli died in 1969 some of the artists, including Putzu, moved to London to work with Pulford, whose expanding company by then was producing poster art for several major film companies.

The poster is in very good folded condition with short diagonal creases at the foot of the left and right vertical folds. There are a few brown spots on the reverse but these do not show through.