The Art Gallery- 2014 Cult Stuff 1914: The War Illustrated British Soldier

This month’s Art Gallery display is from an unknown artist. The checklist that I was able to track down only had a couple of artists listed and this signature does not match any of them. The set is the 2014 Cult Stuff 1914: The War Illustrated, a set to memorialize the 100^th anniversary of WWI, the Great War.

I am a WWI history buff and I have been picking up cards from this set since its release, only a sketch card was outside of my price range, so I was very fortunate to find this one for under $10 shipped. The image is a great subject and depicts a British soldier in full gear going “Over the top”, a term that means the soldiers are literally climbing over the top of their trenches and charging across No Man’s Land in a frontal attack on the German trench lines. As expected, the charges rarely succeed and those that did often found that, so few soldiers made it to the defensive line they couldn’t capture the trench or they couldn’t hold it and ended up retreating. 

Initially Cult Stuff intended on releasing a set a year for the 100^th anniversary of each year of the war (1914-1918) but the 2015 Cult Stuff 1915: The War Illustrated set garnered minimum interest from collectors so they decided to cancel all the releases outside of a 1915 promo card, which really bummed me out.