Poster, 'Joan of Arc Saved France'

Women and war savings stamps

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. The poster specifically encouraged women to buy war savings stamps to support the war effort.

It features a colour image of the French heroine Joan of Arc in full armor, brandishing a sword, but wearing feminine lipstick and makeup. The Christian subtext implies that Joan did God's work to save France, so contemporary American women should join the fight at hand. The use of a strong female figure and the targeting of a female audience is linked to the fact that women's clubs were an important channel for fundraising.

American beauty

The poster was illustrated by Haskell Coffin, who was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1878. Coffin specialised in illustrations of women, in particular 'the American beauty'. His illustratations adorned numerous covers, including magazines such as Redbook, The American and McCalls.

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.