Cyril Power, Tube Train , Prints by Bookroom Art Press

Description:

Linocut (c.1934). Printed from four blocks: Yellow; Red; Light Cobalt Blue; Dark Blue. Original image size: 31.0 x 31.5cm. Power perfectly captures that sense of disengagement, almost an obligatory persona, adopted by all tube train travellers. Yet each of these figures is also particularised: there’s the typist (perhaps) in her short skirt; the besuited city gent perusing the financial pages; the lipstick-painted lady in her new blue hat. And there’s a nice exception to that adopted disengagement: a pretty young woman seated to the right of the picture communicates open-eyed at us, the viewer, and makes us a participant and an engaged fellow traveller.