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Title: Naphta-Cycle
Description: The Naphta-Cycle motor fuel company turned to poster artist Walter Thor to create an attractive advertisement for its product—and all purpose fuel—which could be marketed for use in airships, airplanes, as well as motor cars. Thor, an experienced and well-known illustrator of all-things-motorized,created a moody and romantic image in this poster to sell a seemingly mundane subject. Motor fuel, however, in the early 20th century was a complicated, volatile, and political business. The romantic, might see the poster’s glowing imagery as a rich, warm and inviting vignette about the modern world. The cynic, instead, might insist that the chocolate-brown framing of Thor’s illustration references the odor and grime of Naphtha-era petroleum products and question the poster’s seeming assumption that motorized vehicles would create an efficient and peaceful world. |
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In the early 20th century, two corporate giants, the American company Standard Oil and the European conglomerate Royal Dutch-Shell all but controlled the world petroleum industry. Uses for petroleum products were on the rise worldwide. With this increase in consumer demand, petroleum resources became the subject of intense competition between old and new companies. For France, although an industrialized nation, the French oil industry lagged behind its global neighbors at the very period in history when the production and control of consumption of oil became crucial to national economic life. |
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