Der Bär von Baskerville

A German lithographed placard for a wartime instalment of the long-running German Sherlock Holmes screen series, designed by the Viennese-born commercial artist Ernst Deutsch, later known as Ernst Dryden. Germany ran its own Holmes cycle in parallel with the British and American ones, and pulled it steadily toward the gothic. The Baskerville material was the natural hinge, and posters like this one advertised detection as something closer to dread. Deutsch's poster style is poster-first rather than illustration-first — heavy contour, flat fields, lettering weighted as a design element rather than a caption. The detective story sold as a night on the moor.

Maker

Ernst Deutsch (Ernst Dryden)

Date

1916

Medium of the original

One-sheet poster

Original held by

Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00715