Rare Gleneagles railway poster up for auction

The Tennis Girl by Septimus Edwin Scott on offer in New York sale

One of the rarest and earliest railway posters advertising the newly-built Gleneagles Hotel could fetch £4,000£6,000 at auction next week.

The 39x25in poster, emblazoned with the words The Tennis Girl, Gleneagles, is undated but is thought to have been produced in or around 1925.

Work on Gleneagles Hotel was completed in 1924, a year after the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, which issued the poster, was founded.

The poster is on offer at the Rare and Important Travel Posters sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on October 25.

The Gleneagles hotel and golf resort was the brainchild of Donald A Matheson, the general manager of the Caledonian Railway after he spent a holiday in Strathearn in 1910.

Building work on the hotel started before the First World War but was not completed until 1924.

Swann said: “There is very little historical mention of tennis being played at the Gleneagles Hotel but as the poster clearly illustrates, there certainly appear to have been courts available for guests.”

The Gleneagles poster was designed by artist Septimus Edwin Scott, who was born at Sunderland on March 19 1879.

He studied at the Royal College of Art in London and became a prolific producer of posters and illustrations.

The value of Mr Scott’s work was confirmed at Christie’s South Kensington in London on September 14 2005, when three of his LMS posters sold for £12,840.