2. Braque made one of his bird prints to be included in the industrious School Prints scheme.
In 1935, the British pilot Derek Rawnsley embarked on an ambitious plan: to commission original fine art prints from the world’s most celebrated artists, to be produced economically enough to be sold cheaply to participating public schools, with the goal of exposing young children, who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to visit museums and galleries, to the world of fine art. Rawnsley was killed during WWII, and though his widow Brenda persevered with the plan, the complications of making anything and everything in the aftermath of war eventually caused its demise. Before the project’s end, however, Rawnsley did succeed in commissioning an astonishing array of artwork by the likes of Picasso, Dufy, Matisse, L.S. Lowry, and, of course, the lithograph Bird, Fish, Star by George Braque.