here at the Borthwick Institute. I previously worked for Tate Gallery, organising
art exhibitions, and joined the archives sector expecting to be immersed in a landscape
of mostly paper and parchment documents.
It’s been intriguing to encounter fine art objects in a context where
they can function both as Rowntree’s business records and as autonomous
artworks.
Anthony Devas, Art Student, c1950, oil on canvas, 14 x 10 inches. Ref: R/Aero girls With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
Aero Advert, 1951. Ref: R/Guardbooks/S10. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
We call these paintings the Aero Girls and they form a
somewhat mysterious collection of portraits commissioned by Rowntree’s for use
in Aero chocolate advertising, 1951-1957 both in print and on national TV. Advertising
firm J. W. Thompson ran the campaign, selecting esteemed portrait painters and
illustrators of the day such as Anthony Devas, Henry
Marvell Carr, Vasco
Lazzolo (aka Victor Lazzola), Norman
Hepple and Fleetwood
Walker among others to create “large
illustrations of girls heads” in oil paint. As Emma Robertson states in her
exploration of Chocolate, Women and
Empire, “images of women tended to predominate in Aero marketing, drawing
on and further maintaining the links between women, chocolate and sex.”
Aero
television advert, Portrait – The milk
chocolate that's different, That's nice (1955) B&W, 1955. With kind
permission of Yorkshire Film Archive
Aero advert, 1955. Ref: R/Guardbooks/S10. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
Probably more interesting is the use of the oil painting form as a marketing device within the context of Rowntree’s Aero campaign. By the 1950s the photographic image was as abundant in chocolate advertising as it was in everyday life. The oil painted portrait casts us back to an era before the mechanical reproduction of photography, and alludes to an experience that is special, unique and cannot be repeated elsewhere. The campaign slogan underlines this by proclaiming “For her-AERO the-milk-chocolate that’s different!” [to the arch rival Cadbury’s Dairy Milk].
Aero campaign statement from Rowntree's advertising guardbook, 1951. Ref: R/Guardbooks/S10. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
Seen together the paintings are striking in their disparity
of both style and subject. Several paintings by Devas depict young modern women
wearing simple blouses, sporting gamine haircuts; others by Hepple present more
aristocratic sorts. Although the print campaign ran for at least six years, it
is difficult to trace insightful links between the portraits. Perhaps this is
why the campaign was not a particularly successful one. Indeed much of Aero’s
sales success during this post-war period can be attributed to a renewed
appetite for consumer goods and the end of rationing after 1954.
Norman Hepple, Mary, c1950, oil on canvas, 25 x 21 inches. Ref: R/Aero girls. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
Anthony Devas, Anna, c1950, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches. Ref: R/Aero girls. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
Anthony Devas, Untitled, c1950, oil on canvas, 17 x 13 inches. Ref: R/Aero girls. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
Grant, Elaine, c1955, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches. Ref: R/Aero girls. With kind permission of Nestlé UK |
So who were the Aero
Girls? Anna. Alice. Wendy. Audrey. Avril.
Nancy. Mary. Yvonne. The Country Girl. The Art Student. These names are
sketchily written in pencil on the back of the canvas stretchers. The History
of Advertising Trust informs me that a family historian whose mother was one of
the women depicted in the campaign “suspected that Devas sketched his mother,
as a young woman, on a bus and then created a portrait from the drawing.” I
also spoke to Alex Hutchinson, Nestle heritage officer, to ask if any of the
sitters might have been female factory workers at the Cocoa Works factory in
York, where these paintings had previously been on display. Alex replied that
in fact “little is known about the sitters,” and so the mystery remains.
If you know who any of the the Aero girls are we’d love to
hear from you.
This blog post was
written by Kerstin Doble, National Archives Trainee.
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