Europe: A Pictorial Map
- Title:
- Europe: A Pictorial Map
- Alternate Title:
- Europe: A Pictorial Map
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Chase, Ernest Dudley
- Other Creators:
- King Features Syndicate (publisher)
- Date:
- 1939
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 2262.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2262_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1920 - 1939
- Subject:
- Between the Wars
Pictorial - Measurement:
- 36 x 50 (centimeters, height x width)
- Description:
- Notes:
- This map is a well-known decorative pictorial map of Europe that has been modified with new color, text, and radiating lines to send a powerful warning about the growing territorial threat of Adolf Hitler's Germany in 1939.
The underlying pictorial map of Europe was created a year earlier by Ernest Dudley Chase, "one of the most popular and prolific" American pictorial mapmakers for more than 30 years, beginning in the 1930s. While his work was "skillful" and "meticulous," most of his maps had "a certain formality and repetitive quality." The mail order catalog he produced in the 1940s was entitled "The Ernest Dudley Chase Decorative Pictorial Novelty Maps." Hornsby 2017, 31-33.
Like many of Chase's works, the map is covered with scores of illustrations - mostly architectural sketches, but also animals, airplanes, and ancient and modern ships - filling the land and sea as well as the margins. This revised version was published by King Features Syndicate in an unknown Sunday newspaper supplement. Near the title is a legend in bold text not present on the original: "MODERN GERMANY, shown in red, with Hitler's Mein Kampf dream of further expansion indicated by red lines." The bright red image of Germany stands out on the map, made larger by the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938. The ominous red lines extend south along the Adriatic all the way to Athens, east to the Black Sea as far as the Ukraine, and north to cover all of Poland and the Baltic States. The map thus illustrates only the blueprint for eastern conquest set out in Mein Kampf, and not the growing fears of Hitler's ambitions to the west.
A legend in the lower right-hand corner of the map - also not present on the original - says that it was "Designed and drawn by Ernest Dudley Chase," confirming that Chase himself participated in adding the modifications. That is consistent with Chase's production of patriotic maps during the war years, including "Japan: The Target," which has been called "a masterpiece of graphic design." (ID #2526).
The verso contains articles typical of Sunday supplements of the times, including one about the actor Charles Boyer and another about goldfish-eating, a fad that reached its peak in the spring of 1939.
For other examples of overprinted or otherwise repurposed maps in the collection, Search > "repurposed".
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Source:
- Unknown [Sunday newspaper supplement]
- Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.