Charles Paine

Charles Paine was a versatile and prolific designer, who drew on his training in stained glass to create bold, structured and highly stylised posters for a variety of companies. After graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1919, Paine left London to work for the Applied Art Department of Edinburgh College of Art. Paine’s immediate superior was the distinguished printmaker John Platt (1886-1967) and they had a marked influence on each other’s’ work.

It is thought that Platt introduced him to Frank Pick at the London Underground for whom he was to design 31 posters. The following seven lots were the personal property of Paine and were likely hung in his studio, they convey his varied and striking output for the Underground Group during the 1920s. Paine went on to design for the Empire Marketing Board, GPO, Penguin Books, Sundour Fabrics and on government propaganda during the war.

In 1939 he was engaged by Welwyn Garden City Ltd to ‘take responsibility for the creative angle of the organisation’s publicity’. In 1948 he moved to Jersey where he remained until his death in 1967.