The female gaze | 2 November 2017

Every weekday, I travel by Tube to The Spectator’s office, staring at the posters plastered all over the walls. I like looking at the plays and exhibitions that have recently opened or wondering whether that shampoo really will add more ‘oomph’ to my hair.

Often there is a pretty girl on the poster. A picture of a woman can sell almost anything. I’ve rarely thought much about the individuals who produce the posters. But as a new exhibition at London’s Transport Museum called Poster Girls reveals, there is a rich history of female art running through the city’s concrete veins. For more than 100 years, the transport network has provided an exhibition space for some of Britain’s most talented female illustrators and artists — plenty of whom are quite unknown today.

Frank Pick is the man to thank for first championing the ‘poster girls’. He was the enlightened British transport administrator whose holistic civic vision transformed London.