Laurence Fish was a successful commercial illustrator and artist. A founder member of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers, he was best known for his travel posters in the 1950s and 1960s.

One advertisement for British Rail was voted Poster of the Year. Such images, encouraging visitors to “go by Rail” to resorts like Southsea, Herne Bay and Hastings, are collector’s items which fetch several hundred pounds at auction.

Fish signed his posters “Laurence” to distinguish them from other commercial work, in particular his illustrations and technical images for magazines and journals, such as Flight International and Aeroplane, which brought details of the latest jet aircraft and flying technology to readers in the era before colour photography became routine.

In later life, when he was able to shed the constraints of commercial work, Fish enjoyed painting for pleasure. His figurative oils and watercolours, done in an Impressionist manner, often depicting harbours and townscapes, especially cafés and markets in France, won a keen following.

As well as regular showings at the Priory Gallery in Broadway in the Cotswolds, he exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer show, and at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and the Royal Society of Marine Artists, as well as many provincial galleries. He is also represented in several corporate collections.

Fish was born in London in 1919. His father, Donald, was a policeman who worked for MI5 and then achieved renown as head of security at BOAC, now British Airways. His colourful book Airline Detective (1962) with a forward by Ian Fleming, even spawned a TV series, Zero One.

After leaving school in Streatham, Fish first found employment in the coach-building business, working on the production of special bodies for exotic motorcars like Alvis and Delahaye. He then moved on to hone his design and drawing skills as an illustrator in Max Miller’s studio at the publishing company Iliffe. There he specialised in artwork on technical subjects; aircraft, yachts and cars in particular.

At the start of the war Fish joined the RAF. His eyesight was not good enough for him to become a pilot, as was his ambition, but in recompense his drawing skills came to the attention of Lord Rothschild, the Cambridge scientist and don, who headed a division of MI5 concerned with bombs and booby traps.

Thereafter Fish was regularly seconded to MI5 for whom he had made accurate detailed drawings of the mechanisms of explosive devices for the use of those who had to disarm them.

He often took these devices home to work on them. On one occasion a small bomb modelled as a cigarette box spent the night under the bed in his small London flat. In the morning, to his surprise — and the consternation of his wife — he found the device was live rather than disarmed as he had assumed.

After the war the bulk of Fish’s early work was commissioned by industrial companies, and his artwork featured on the covers of technical periodicals. He was happy to turn his hand to other tasks, however, and he produced artwork for advertisements, book jackets, brochures and corporate portraits of senior executives.

Fish is survived by his second wife, Jean, and the eldest son of his first marriage.

Laurence Fish, artist and illustrator, was born on November 24, 1919. He died on June 19, 2009, aged 89