Bicycle Gallery

Family from Oklahoma; have been in California for 6 years..., near Fresno, California, 1939 Creator: Dorothea Lange

Highway City, California, near Fresno. Family from Oklahoma; have been in California for six years, have been migratory workers now on Works Progress Administration (WPA) from which they may be cut off at the opening of the 1939 harvest. Their house represents one of many similar structures, which they are attempting to construct by their own efforts on poor land, for which they are paying a few dollars a month out of the WPA budget. Their light bill is two dollars a month. Water bill one dollar a month, kerosene for cooking five dollars per month, approximately. They own a 1929 Ford. "The cheapest thing for the government to do would be to put people like me on enough land to make a living on. You can't tell me anything about running around with the fruit, I know that deal. You are lucky if you make enough to get home. I'm not a kickin, I'm being tuk care of, but if I should live to be hundred this way I'm not getting ahead noways."

© Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Design for a shop window, 1950. Creator: Shirley Markham

Design for a shop window, 1950. Bicycles and a lamppost, background for a window display. Shirley Markham (1931-1999) studied Graphic Design and Illustration at Central School of Art in London from 1950-1952. The writer, artist, poet, and illustrator Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) was one of her tutors, and her style of drawing was also influenced by other British illustrators such as Edward Ardizzone, Quentin Blake and Edward Bawden. Markham spent time in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy, and also visited Rome, sketching classical buildings. After graduating from Central, she worked as a graphic designer, producing book illustrations, cartoons for comics, menus and programmes. She gave up her promising career however when she got married in 1957. Middle-class women at that time were expected to devote their energies to bringing up children and running the home, and despite her obvious talent, she lacked the confidence to return to illustration. Her portfolio remained in the family attic for many years, but now her work is published here for the first time

© Shirley Markham Collection / Heritage-Images

South African Light Horse (Trooper), Brabants Horse (Trooper), Duke of Edinburgh's

South African Light Horse (Trooper), Brabant's Horse (Trooper), Duke of Edinburgh's Volunteer Rifles (Dispatch Rider), 1900. The South African Light Horse regiment of the British Army were raised in Cape Colony in 1899 and disbanded in 1907 From "South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. IV", by Louis Creswicke. [T. C. & E. C. Jack, Edinburgh, 1900]

© The Print Collector/Heritage Images