Artist's rare railway poster set to go under auction in America

The 49-inch poster, emblazoned with the words ‘British Industries Steel’ was produced by the London Midland and Scottish Railway in 1924 and features a painting of a steelworks near Motherwell, Scotland, by the Sunderland-born artist.

Now the poster is up for sale and it is expected to fetch between 800 dollars and 1,200 dollars at Swann Auction Galleries in New York.

The auction coincides with the 150th anniversary of Richard Jack’s birth in Sunderland on February 15,1866.

Jack and his parents ,Hartlepool-born printer-compositor William Jack and Sedgefield-born Mary Ann Jack, lived at Lumley Square, Hartlepool.

Richard Jack is one of Sunderland’s most important artists.For he and Charles Dickens’s close friend, Clarkson Stanfield, are the only Sunderland-born artists to be elected to the Royal Academy, which entitled them to place the letters ‘RA’ after their names.

Jack was elected to the Royal Academy on April 26,1920.

Since the Royal Academy was founded in 1768,there have been only 603 Royal Academicians and they include Turner, Constable, Gainsborough and Reynolds, so Sunderland’s Richard Jack and Clarkson Stanfield were part of a very special group of artists.

The Queen owns Richard Jack’s portraits of King George V and Queen Mary and also Jack’s painting of The Chinese Chippendale Room at Buckingham Palace.

On October 10,1926,Queen Mary recorded in her diary: "We went to Mr Jack’s studio to see G’s picture,also a lovely picture he has painted of my Chinese room. Home to tea."

Sunderland Museum and Hartlepool Museum also own paintings by Richard Jack,who emigrated to Canada in 1932 and died there on June 29, 1952.