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Title: Loterie Nationale Tranche de l’Aviation Description:
The round-faced, rosy-cheeked man enthusiastically waving his arms above his head was a familiar sight to the French public. Throughout the 1930s, he had appeared in various guises in posters advertising the French National Lottery. From 1933, when the French government reinstituted the lottery to raise funds primarily for wounded, French veterans of World War I, this cartoon man plowed fields, climbed sail boat rigging, planted flowers and other activities to encourage French citizens to purchase lottery tickets. Even when France went to war again in 1939, the national lottery’s cherubic spokesman maintained his cheery disposition. Perhaps the artists who created him, Edgard Derouet and Charles Lesacq, hoped that his exuberant response to aviation would inspire even reluctant gamblers purchase a lottery ticket. Floating from a parachute seemingly designed after such a ticket, he floats down to the text which announces that profits from the 11th drawing of 1939 would benefit France’s aeronautical efforts to win the war. |
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