Aerial art of the ages

Flight Journal, Aug 2000 by Allen, Bill, Villard, Henry Serrano

Editors' note:

As we approach the centennial of flight, it's difficult for most of us to imagine how the world saw those very first intrepid aviators and their seemingly magical-but, at the same time, precarious-little machines. Any flight was cause for celebration, and because of that, as each country conquered gravity, public displays of aerial derring-do burst forth in a fit of aeronautical enthusiasm and became the height of entertainment worldwide.

To advertise these aviation events, promoters commissioned some of the best artists of the time to paint posters, which were then duplicated and distributed. At the time, the posters were undoubtedly considered worthless, as advertising of any given era usually is. As a result, very few examples of these earliest forms of aviation art have sur vived, and their value has skyrocketed.

Beginning April 29, 2000, the Smithsonian Institution's Traveling Exhibit Service (SITES), and Bill and Claudia Allen of Allen Airways Flying Museum in San Diego, California, have pooled their considerable artistic resources to mount a traveling exhibit of early flight posters and related material. This exclusive exhibit, called "Looping the Loop: Posters of Early Right gives a view of early aviation as seen through the eyes of the artists. The first venue for this exhibit will be the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. (April 29 to July 20, 2000). Other locations throughout the United States and Canada are listed on the SITES website; www.si.edu/sites.

In addition to the traveling exhibit, Bill Allen has authored a book with the late Henry Serrano Villard (Kales Publishing) with the same name: "Looping the Loop: Posters of Early Flight." Besides reproducing the posters in the traveling exhibit, this elegant, large-format, museum-qualify book includes an additional 70 posters, with most of the text written by Henry Villard, who witnessed many of these early air meets. The book is available at most major bookstores and directly from Allen Airways Flying Museum, 2020 N. Marshall Ave., EI Cajon, CA 92020, for $39.95 (plus $4 S&H; specify autographed copies).

Meeting at Belmont Park

October 22 to 30, 1910

Courtesy of National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.

It was soon discovered that racetracks for horses were natural aerodromes, and when the spotlight shifted to New York for an international tournament, the site that was chosen was its famous suburban course at Belmont Park, Long Island. As many as 100,000 spectators cheered performances by American, French and British fliers during the last nine days of October 1910. Society was represented in force, and it lionized handsome Claude Grahame-White, the popular English airman and hero of this occasion.

New York talked of little else during the week the meet was in progress. Noted aviators who represented the United States, France and Britain competed daily in altitude, speed, duration and cross-country events. Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxsey-of the Wright School-rose to sensational heights above the clouds in an ongoing duel that earned them the nickname "The Heavenly Twins." The climax came at the end of the week with the second annual contest for the Gordon Bennett speed trophy, which was won by Grahame-White for the Royal Aero Club of Great Britain with a Bleriot XI. It was powered by a 100hp Gnome motor at the record-breaking clip of 65mph.

Meeting at Nice

April 19 to 25, 1910

Artist, Charles Brosse. Printer, A fiches Photographiques Robaudy, Cannes. Willis Allen jr. Collection.

Throughout 1910, posters proliferated like flowers in the spring. To quote one of the first women writers to fall in love with the airplane, Gertrude Bell, "All the world of aviation was fresh and young and untried; to rise at all was a glorious adventure, and to find oneself flying through the air was the too-good-to-be-- true realization of a lifelong dream."

The Nice meet, sponsored by Aristide Briand, president of the French Council of Ministers and Minister of the Interior, was like most meets of the time-an entertainment event thinly disguised as a professional competition between the top pilots of the day. Their hope was to promote aviation through the sheer spectacle of the ad of flight.

As was often the case at the time, the artist had most probably seen an airplane only once ar twice and used his imagination to fill in the structural gaps of the compact machine he pictured frolicking overhead.

Wie die Welt von Oben Aussieht 1912

Artist, R. Spiegel. Printer, Raleigh & Robert, Paris. Swiss Transport Museum, Lucerne. From their very beginning, dirigibles had a less threatening ambiance that proved very attractive to the general populace. The concept of levitation by what was perceived to be natural forces rather than by clattering, smoky machines that could fail at any moment drew many people in for both sightseeing tours and long-distance travel.

One of the earliest of Zeppelin's dirigibles, Schwaben, was used extensively all over Europe for sightseeing tours. It was turned over to the German army as the Zill in 1912. Schwaben had a rigid framework of aluminum with a thin outer covering and 16 drum-shaped gasbags; its overall length was more than 400 feet.