John Hassall was born at Walmer in Kent on 21 May 1868. He was the son of a naval officer and was educated in Worthing, at Newton Abbot College and at Neuenheim College, Heidelberg. He twice tried, without success, to enter the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. He then went to farm with his brother Owen in Manitoba, Canada, and whilst there, turned his hand to sketching. Returning to England, he went on to Paris and Antwerp to study art, and the first pictures he sent to the Royal Academy were accepted. Nevertheless, he was a practical man and realised that he could not afford to spend months on a painting. Influenced by his friend Dudley Hardy, Hassall turned his attention to poster design. In 1895, he began work as an advertising artist for David Allen & Sons, a relationship which lasted half as century. He was prolific and later recalled that in his first year as a poster artist, he produced 400 posters (eight a week). He also became a book illustrator and cartoonist. His most famous posters were for household products, theatre productions and railway companies. In 1900 he opened his own New Art School and School of Poster Design in Kensington where he numbered Bert Thomas, Bruce Bairnsfather, H M Bateman and Harry Rountree among his students. (The school was closed upon the outbreak of the Great War). In 1900 he illustrated his first book for Blackie and Sons Ltd. In time, he would illustrate more then 70 for that publisher alone. In 1901 he was elected to the membership of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colour and the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. It has been claimed that the Lincolnshire seaside resort of Skegness in Lincolnshire rose to fame on the back of a poster. The Jolly Fisherman Poster and its accompanying slogan ‘It’s So Bracing’ is probably the most famous holiday advertisement ever drawn. It has been recycled hundreds of times in almost every newspaper in Great Britain. Hassall drew the poster in 1908 as a commission for the Great Northern Railway Company. For that masterpiece, he received the princely sum of twelve guineas. The poster was first put on display at Easter that same year, in conjunction with a special three-shilling excursion from Kings Cross. The last of these trips ran on August Bank Holiday, 1913. Hassall visited Skegness only once in his life. That was in 1936 when the town which he had put on the map, presented him with an illuminated address and ‘the Freedom of the Foreshore’ Hassall said, ‘The reality of Skegness has eclipsed all my anticipations. It is even more bracing and attractive than I had been led to expect’. His original masterpiece hangs in a place of honour in Skegness Town Hall. It was formally presented to the town by British Railways, along with the copyright in 1966. ‘The Poster King’ as he was dubbed by the newspapers, was one of the most influential poster artists of the early 20th century. He considered that the artist who influenced him most was Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), who was working in Paris when he was a student there. Both employed the technique of outlining masses of colour, reminiscent of children’s painting books but generally speaking, Mucha’s use of line resembles that of a stained glass window, whereas Hassall uses far broader areas of dominant, primary and secondary colours enclosed within a bold black outline. Hassall should be noted for his phrase: ‘First of all ideas, either in design, colouring or catch phrase – ideas first because without them the rest of the qualifications are not much use.’ He was an early member and later President of the London Sketch Club. He died at Walton-on-the-Naze on 8 March 1948. In October 2008 London Transport Museum at Covent Garden in London mounted a major retrospective exhibition of poster art featuring the work of Hassall, Edward Bawden, Dora Batty, Edward McKnight Kauffer, John Nash, Edward Wadsworth, William Roberts, Abram Games, Howard Hodgkin and Alan Fletcher. Hassall’s 1908 No Need to Ask a Policeman was commissioned by Frank Pick, who was head of marketing for the London Underground, to publicise a new map. It was the start of Pick’s 32-year relationship with the arts. That link may be further understood through his close friendship with the sculptor, ceramicist, jeweller, teacher, silversmith and inventor Harold Stabler. His wife, the potter Phoebe Stabler sculpted the London Underground War Memorial in the lobby of 100 Petty France, London. Hasall’s The British Empire may be seen above.