Edward McKnight Kauffer’s Summer Sale at Derry and Tom’s, London, created in 1919, turns a seasonal retail announcement into a brisk maritime spectacle. A cream-coloured sailing boat cuts diagonally across green and blue water, accompanied by smaller craft beneath a broad turquoise sky. Below, the words “SUMMER SALE at DERRY & TOMS” are given almost architectural weight, their emphatic lettering held within a deep maroon field. Flat colour, sharp contours and an off-centre arrangement make the poster feel immediate and animated rather than merely informational.

Although catalogued within the broad field of travel posters, the design advertises a sale at the London department store Derry and Toms rather than a destination. Kauffer nevertheless drew upon the visual language of leisure and movement familiar from transport publicity. American-born and trained in San Francisco, Chicago and Paris, he became one of the most distinctive graphic designers working in Britain. His commercial work brought the simplified forms and heightened rhythms of modern art into the everyday urban environment, where a poster needed to communicate amid the competing signs, traffic and crowds of the street.

A closer look

The largest boat supplies the composition with its principal diagonal. Its pale sail rises through the centre, sharply separated from the cooler background, while fine angular lines suggest rigging, folds and the pull of wind. The mast and sail direct the eye downwards towards the lettering, joining illustration and message into a single movement. Small sailors are reduced to compact marks within the boats: enough to establish human scale without interrupting the poster’s bold graphic structure.

In the upper left, several smaller blue-and-white sails recede across the water. Their staggered positions create depth, but Kauffer avoids conventional pictorial modelling. Instead, distance is constructed through overlap, shifts in scale and blocks of contrasting colour. The sea is similarly compressed into bands and facets of green and blue, with darker accents giving the waves a clipped, rhythmic energy. Against these cool tones, orange details provide sudden warmth, particularly around the lower text area.

The typography is as active as the boats above it. “SUMMER SALE” appears in large capitals, with differences in colour and scale creating a lively hierarchy, while the smaller “at DERRY & TOMS” completes the commercial message. The maroon ground anchors this dense lower section against the openness of the turquoise sky. A narrow dark border contains the entire arrangement, and Kauffer’s signature appears discreetly at the bottom right—a quiet counterpoint to the forceful lettering nearby.

Context and significance

In 1919, such a design belonged to a rapidly developing culture of metropolitan advertising. Posters were not simply carriers of information; they had to seize attention quickly and remain legible at a distance. Kauffer answered that practical demand without abandoning visual sophistication. The compressed perspective, emphatic diagonals and bright, non-naturalistic colour reflect his engagement with the energy of avant-garde art, translated here into a form suited to London’s commercial streets.

The sailing subject is especially effective because it communicates summer without resorting to a literal view of the shop or its merchandise. Wind, water and crowded sails give the sale an atmosphere of speed and outdoor exhilaration. More than a century later, the design retains its freshness through this close union of image and text: the boats do not merely decorate the announcement, but lend its words their momentum.

Choosing the right size and finish

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The model in the listing images is holding the 36x24in (90x60cm) version of this art print.

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This artwork is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The work is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present an art print without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas art and explore the differences between my different finishes.