Paul George Lawler's Pan American Posters

Above is a well-known poster from around 1941.  The setting seems to be largely imaginary or exaggerated, but the airplane is correctly shown.   Pan American Airways was featuring its new Boeing 314 "Clipper" flying boat airliners.

A series of posters featuring Boeing 314s and, occasionally, other aircraft was commissioned by Pan Am in the years leading up to the USA's entry in World War 2.  The artist was Paul George Lawler.  My Internet search yielded essentially zero information regarding Lawler.  Nor did I find him listed in my illustration reference books.

This is somewhat surprising, because Lawler did nice work for Pan Am, and the airline almost surely did not want to trust such important publicity to someone without credentials.

Below are some examples of his Pan Am work.  A few images can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Gallery

This poster is an early one because it shows the poorly-drawn original Boeing 314.  It had a too-small single tail that, after some testing, finally was replaced by a triple tail.

The aircraft in this poster seems to be based on Pan Am's Martin M-130 flying boat, though its sponsons are not shown.

Pan Am began flying Boeing 314s to Europe in 1939, shortly before the war.  By this time, Lawler had access to more and better reference photos of the 314.

Another well-known (in Hawaii, anyway) poster.  The size of the 314 was greatly exaggerated.  Compare the size of the passengers by the aircraft to those in the photo below.