This item is sold. It has been placed here in our online archives as a service for researchers and collectors.
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First Transcontinental Night Air Mail - 1921
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California To Australia - 1928
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"Dawn-to Dusk" Transcontinental
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Four-Continent Flight - 1927
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Non - Stop Refueling Flight - 1930
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New York to Paris - 1927
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First Pan-American Good Will Flight - 1926
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Paris to New York - 1930
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First Round-the-World Flight - 1924
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First South Pole Flight - 1929
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First Thompson Trophy Race Winner - 1929
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First Transcontinental Passenger Service - 1930
Transcontinental and Western Air, Inc.
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Prints after a series of 12 paintings of famous events in early aviation. They were created by artist Charles H. Hubbell for Thompson Products, Inc., a manufacturer of automotive and aircraft parts in Cleveland, Ohio. The company sponsored the Thompson Trophy Air Race, which began in 1929, and for over 30 years beginning in 1937, engaged Hubbell to produce illustrated promotional calendars. In advertising the prints, the lithographer quoted the artist's endorsement of them: "They've got everything I put into the [original oil painting] pictures."
Charles H. Hubbell was one of the foremost commerical aviation artists in the U.S., with more than 500 paintings to his credit, a body of work that is an illustrated compendium of aviation history. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he entered the Naval Air Service during World War I. Stationed in Buffalo, he redesigned airplanes at the Curtiss airplane factory. After the war he returned to Cleveland and graduated from the Cleveland School of Art. He received a pilot's license in 1927. In 1934, Hubbell was commissioned by Fred Crawford, chairman of Thompson Products, to paint past winners of the Thompson Trophy Air Race. Thus began a long career as Thompson/TRW's free-lance artist, for whom he produced an annual illustrated calendar from 1937 to 1972. Today many of his paintings are in the permanent collection of the Western Reserve Historical Society's Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland.
Reference:
"Charles Herman Hubbell." The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. 18 July 1997. http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=HCH1 (23 January 2003).