?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
HENRY DREYFUSS. "Lounge section toward end of car." Finished drawing for the Empire State Express, 1941. Gouache on board. Fluid border around image measuring roughly 254x406 mm; 10x16 inches, on 14 1/2x19 1/4-inch board. Verso with artist's stamp and studio address on verso, with job number, dated 6/10/1941.
In 1938, industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss was commissioned by the New York Central to design streamlined train sets in modern, Art Deco style, with the locomotive and passenger cars rendered in blues and grays (the colors of the New York Central). >Dreyfuss's design for The 20th Century Limited was arguably the most famous American passenger train of all time. The Empire State Express ran 620 miles from New York to Cleveland via Buffalo. Its stainless steel coaches boasted every modern convenience of the period including air conditioning and sleek lounge seating. The re-equipped train was to debut on December 7, 1941, but was upstaged by the events of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. After World War II, a whole new train-set pulled by diesel-electric locomotives was commissioned (ceremonially inaugurated by General Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1948). It was this set that was featured in such popular postwar films as North by Northwest and The Band Wagon.
