Kerry Lee

A post-war pictorial wall map of London.

• Kerry Lee (English).
• London: The Bastion of Liberty.
• London: Pictorial Maps Ltd., circa 1955.
• Color lithographic map.
• This work is presented unframed.

A quad royal poster map of central London, presented as a bird's-eye view. It covers from Kensington Church Street in the west, clockwise to Notting Hill, Regents Park, Islington, Aldgate, The Tower of London and Tower Bridge, Elephant & Castle, Lambeth and Chelsea Football Ground. Landmark buildings are shown in profile, with others shown in the 27 vignette scenes in the borders, although some illustrate tourist attractions outside the map, including Windsor Castle, Hampton Court and Epsom Races.

The map was first published in 1946 as a tourism advertising map, marketed overseas, especially in the Americas. Nods to London's recent tribulations are the quote from Winston Churchill in 1940 ("We would rather see London in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved") and the vignette commemorating the role of Civil Defence workers during the Blitz.

The artist, Kerry Lee (1902-1988), drew two maps of London. The first, ''London Town'', took inspiration from Gill's 'Wonderground' map of London of 1914, with jokey figures walking the streets, with strangers trying to elicit directions from unfriendly locals. Here the figures are more historical, with Chaucer's Pilgrims, national heroes and even duelists in Hyde Park.