Catalogue Number
NMLH.2022.272
Object Name
Postcard
Place
Leeds
People
Bell, Steve; Leeds Postcards; Gainsborough, Thomas
Date
1983
Description
Postcard with an image of a painting on the front. The image shows a landscape with a tree and airplane in the background. In the foreground is a cartoon image of Margaret Thatcher wearing a Union Jack dress. There is a man next to her holding a gun. The reverse of the postcard has publishing information, and a title stating "Steve Bell's Old Masters: No.2. After Mr and Mrs Andrew by Thomas Gainsborough."
Steve Bell is a English political cartoonist. His work is usually left-wing, and parodies older traditional paintings by incorporating political figures into them. The painting he is parodying in this postcard is "Mr and Mrs Andrews." The painting began to receive hostile scrutiny as a paradigm of the paternalist and capitalist society of 18th-century England.
There is a Leeds postcards logo - Leeds Postcards was founded in 1979, with the intention of using postcards âas a political tool and agent for changeâ. They quickly became well-known, producing some iconic work with activist groups such as the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (MCANW) and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) branches across the country, and artists including Peter Kennard and Steve Bell. They are still publishing postcards today. Throughout the 1980s, Leeds Postcards published a number of cards satirising the threat of nuclear war, and celebrating the movement against the bomb.
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