ROTTERDAM.- During the recent May auctions at Venduhuis Rotterdam, Fenix, the art museum about migration, purchased an iconic Art Deco poster of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd. Multiple versions of the design by J.A.W. von Stein (1896–1965), titled Rotterdamsche Lloyd Java Sumatra, are known in various sizes and with different prints in multiple language editions. The popular poster is well known through thousands of later reproductions worldwide and is still available. The original poster at Fenix, dating from 1931, is the rare large version, measuring 110.5 x 63.2 cm.

The 1930s marked a golden age for large, luxurious ocean liners. Increasingly comfortable ships transported passengers between all continents in ever shorter travel times. Shipping companies competed with seductive posters created by famous designers such as the Frenchman A.M. Cassandre. His posters for the Statendam of the Holland America Line (1928) and the French ship Normandie (1935) rank among the most beautiful, along with the Rotterdamsche Lloyd Java Sumatra poster. The streamlined forms of the new era, the comfortable interiors in the smoking lounges, dining rooms, and swimming pools of these ships, offered passengers ultimate luxury during their long crossing. The characteristic Art Deco style and geometric design of the vertical palm trees in silhouette and the horizontal, cool shape of the ship dominate the image. The size of the majestic ship is more than doubled in the reflection of the smooth waterline.

Baloeran

The Rotterdamsche Lloyd (founded in 1883) specialized in sea voyages to the Dutch East Indies, a journey of approximately six weeks. In 1908, the company acquired its own quay at the newly constructed Schiehaven. Before that, the Lloyd operated from the Wilhelminakade, directly opposite Fenix. At the Lloydkade, mainly civil servants going on leave with their families disembarked, as did soldiers and merchants. The Steam Passenger Ship Baloeran, named after a volcano on the island of Java, was built in 1930 for the Rotterdamsche Lloyd and maintained a regular service to Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia). During World War II, in 1940, the ship was seized during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and renamed MS Strassburg and used as a hospital ship. On September 1st, 1943, she hit a mine off the coast of IJmuiden and was placed on a sandbank. During a British raid, the Baloeran was struck by torpedoes, broke in two, and finally disappeared to the bottom of the North Sea. The poster is a single reminder of her grandiose past. Similarly to the illustrious designer Johann Anton Willebrord von Stein, who delivered a one-hit wonder, a masterwork of graphic design, but as an artist he is absent from art-historical literature and museum collections.