AUTO HISTORY

Motor Illustrator: Vincent H. Lynch

March 1918 cover. Amid a smoky, World War I scene of destroyed buildings, a young woman in military garb and holding onto a supply locker stands beside a U.S. ambulance.

Vincent H. Lynch (July 4, 1880 — August 3, 1918), son of Brooklyn contractor and builder John F. Lynch, was a commercial illustrator whose work appeared in American Magazine, Scientific American, Everybody's Magazine, as well as other periodicals.

Educated in Washington, D.C. schools, he studied at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, exhibiting his paintings there and at the Society of Washington Artists and the Washington Water Color Club. At the Corcoran graduation in 1909, he won first prize in composition. During World War I, he illustrated propaganda posters, the most famous of which was "Ammunition", which promoted the sale of War bonds. He posed himself in front of a mirror to draw the face of the young man with weapons, reaching out to the viewer with an outstretched hand, as if asking for ammunition. The poster's text read, "Remember — Bonds Buy Bullets".

A young man on August 1, 1918, he went into the hospital for a simple operation on his leg. Post-surgery, however, a blood clot developed and broke off, reaching his heart and killing him.

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