?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
ACHILLE BELTRAME (1871-1945) E. & A. MELE & CIE. 1901. 69 1/4x97 inches. G. Ricordi & Cie., Milan. Condition B+: restored loss in top margin; repaired tears in margins and image; restoration along sharp vertical and horizontal folds. Four sheets. Framed. The Mele Brothers opened their first department store in Naples in 1889. Their business was very successful, in large part due to their extraordinary sense of advertising and the tremendous posters they commissioned in collaboration with the great lithographer, Ricordi, in Milan. For over 25 years (until 1915), Ricordi's formidable stable of artists, led by Adolfo Hohenstein and Leopoldo Metlicovitz, produced some of the finest images in poster art history. Beltrame, who was primarily regarded as a painter, designed several posters for Mele. As with all the Mele images, it depicts a charming, spotless upper-class scene, and, as with all of Beltrame's work, the faces of the characters are depicted in a heightened, realistic manner. Maitres 1900 p. 133, Mele p. 86.
