My research examines the output of female poster artists working in early 20th-century Britain; a period noted for high-quality and stylistically modern commercial art. Focusing on prolific but under-acknowledged artists such as Dora Batty, Herry Perry, and Anna Zinkeisen I am investigating how women used applied art mediums to overcome the gender boundaries of fine-art practice, whilst also considering how this connected to the changing social, political, and cultural position of women in interwar Britain.
My objective is to provide vital research into figures whose contemporary success has been overlooked by academic study, countering historiographical repression due to medium and gender. In doing this I will be contributing to developing discourses on poster and commercial-art history, whilst also engaging with historiography on British modernism, female power, and public engagement with art.