Tom Purvis

Tom Purvis was a British painter and one of the most influential commercial poster artist. His father was Thomas George Purvis, a sailor and marine artist known as T. G. Purvis (1861-1933). Tom Purvis went to Camberwell School of Art and then immediately served six years at the advertising firm of Mather and Crowther, and then learned lithography at the Avenue Press.

In World War I Purvis served with the Artists’ Rifles and also produced posters for the Red Cross. In 1923 Purvis started working for the LNER (London and North Eastern Railway) as Advertising Manager. Between 1923 and 1934 he was responsible for over 100 posters, at the rate of one every two months. Many of his compositions for the wide range of clients he had attracted suggest a dynamic use of photography as an aid to composition.

During World War II Purvis was an official artist attached to the Ministry of Supply. Purvis later turned to portraiture as others before him had done, and as a devout Roman Catholic, to religious oil paintings.