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Dracula Has Risen From the Grave poster design

Poster
1968 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

Thomas William Chantrell (1916-2001) was one of the premier cinema-poster artists of the twentieth century. Without formal training but with a facility for commercial design, he worked as an illustrator for Bateman Artists. In the late 1940s the firm was acquired by the major advertising agent Allardyce Palmer. Chantrell increasingly worked on film accounts and when Allardyce Palmer set up an Entertainments Publicity Division in 1957, Chantrell was its Art Director. In 1965, Allardyce Palmer took on the advertising for Hammer Films. Between 1965 and 1969, Chantrell produced all Hammer’s posters and effectively became their house designer. As well as creating posters for completed Hammer films, his compelling artwork was used to secure funding for speculative titles.

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watch A brief history of vampires – in print, photography and posters From a pressed specimen of a dead bat, to a 19th-century photograph of gothic ruins, to an AIDS awareness poster from the mid-1990s, explore the legacy of Bram Stoker's classic horror story 'Dracula' across the V&A's collections.

Object details

Categories
Object type
TitleDracula Has Risen From the Grave poster design (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Design painted onto paper, title painted seperatly and then with design mounted on card.
Brief description
Tom Chantrall, poster design for 'Dracula Has Risen From the Grave', 1968
Physical description
Title 'Dracula Has Risen From the Graven' written across top in yellow, then image of Dracula with hands raised fills the middle section of the poster design. Then at the bottom of the design (from left to right) there is a grave, a priest, a young man, a couple in bed, a man gripping onto a woman's shoulder, a woman in a white corset style dress and a male in a long black cloak.
Dimensions
  • Whole object height: 60.2cm
  • Whole object width: 80.6cm
  • Height: cm
  • Width: cm
Style
Credit line
Gift of Shirley Chantrell
Object history
When Chantrell was producing the artwork for Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968), he was not supplied with the necessary publicity stills of Christopher Lee. As an interim solution, he used photographs of himself posing in the role as the basis for the design. The distributor announced that the poster was needed immediately and it went to press still featuring Chantrell’s self-portrait.
Subject depicted
Summary
Thomas William Chantrell (1916-2001) was one of the premier cinema-poster artists of the twentieth century. Without formal training but with a facility for commercial design, he worked as an illustrator for Bateman Artists. In the late 1940s the firm was acquired by the major advertising agent Allardyce Palmer. Chantrell increasingly worked on film accounts and when Allardyce Palmer set up an Entertainments Publicity Division in 1957, Chantrell was its Art Director. In 1965, Allardyce Palmer took on the advertising for Hammer Films. Between 1965 and 1969, Chantrell produced all Hammer’s posters and effectively became their house designer. As well as creating posters for completed Hammer films, his compelling artwork was used to secure funding for speculative titles.
Associated objects
Collection
Accession number
E.579-2014

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Record createdJune 19, 2014
Record URL
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