Poster, 'Keep Him Free'

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This First World War poster was created by the United States Government Treasury Department to advertise the sale of war saving stamps to help fund the country's participation in the war.

Land of the free

The poster was designed by Charles Livingston Bull, who was the premiere American wildlife artist of his time. Originally chief taxidermist at National Museum in Washington, D.C., Bull sketched at the zoo and attended night classes after work before embarking on a career as a freelance animal illustrator in New York. Bull's design features a colour image of an eagle perched on its eerie, around which planes fly. The patriotic image and title refer to the American ideal of the United States as the land of the free.

British and American Posters in New Zealand

This item is part of a collection of First World War posters sent to New Zealand as examples of British and American wartime propaganda. From 1917-1919, the Dominion Museum (now Te Papa) collected such war material with the help of the New Zealand High Commissioner in London and the Department of Defence. This particular poster arrived with the second batch of posters of over one hundred British and American war posters, sent by the High Commissioner in London via the Department of Internal Affairs in June 1919 and New Zealand War Records Section in London (Department of Defence).

The museum intended to collect and display such objects in a planned national war museum in Wellington which never eventuated. Instead, the museum toured over 100 war posters around New Zealand in the early 1920s in the context of increasing commemoration of the war during peacetime. For many, the posters illustrated important aspects of the war and the history of New Zealand's part in the war. This commemorative function was far removed from their original function to encourage wartime contribution.