BEERBOHM (Max).
Miniature Design for a colossal fresco commemorating the International Advertising Convention (Wembley, July 1924) and the truly wonderful torrents of cant and bunkum that were outpoured from it.
A hideous gallery of ten advertising men with stick-on haloes are tearfully proclaiming their sincerity, before a figure making obeisance, representing ‘The Press’.
Max told the story of this satire later in one of his BBC broadcasts, read in September 1942, and reprinted in Mainly on the Air. Describing the Wembley advertising convention ‘They spoke not as tradesmen; they spake as Crusaders, as Knights of the Holy Grail. I rather wondered they hadn’t had a marching song composed for them. They ought to have come tramping from Wembley to London, four abreast, under flying banners, chanting a song with that almost sacred refrain: ‘All for Each, and Each for All’. I am sorry to say that I presently struck a jarring note. I was having an exhibition of caricatures at the Leicester Galleries; and one of these, hung in the middle of one of the walls, was a group of strong, stout, square-jawed business men, with hands piously folded and brass haloes attached to their heads, and with a very rude inscription by me beneath them. I have often wondered who bought the nefarious thing. I am sorry to say that on the opening day it was one of the first drawings sold.’ It was in fact (according to the LG label on the verso) bought by L.J. Cadbury, chocolate millionaire and Beerbohm collector (15 drawings identified in Hart-Davis), who presumably knew a thing or two about advertising.
Published in Observations of 1928. RHD 2026.
