?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
ADOLPHE CRESPIN (1859-1944) ROBERT B. GOLDSCHMIDT. Circa 1896. 22 1/8x16 3/8 inches. Gouweloos, Brussels. Condition B+: vertical and horizontal folds; pinholes in margins. Hand-signed by the artist in pen, printed on blue paper. Framed. A Belgian painter, artist, and interior decorator, Crespin spent time in Paris studying with the great French academic painter Leon Bonnat. A pioneer in Belgian Art Nouveau, Crespin's influence was both theoretical and practical, as he was a professor at several of Belgium's major institutions, the Academie Royale and St. Josse ten Noode. Several of his posters were designed in conjunction with Edward Duyck, whose premature death in 1897 ended their collaboration. Crespin was very friendly with the famous architect Paul Hankar (for whom he designed the facades of many buildings), and one of Crespin's most famous posters depicts his friend at work, bent over a table. Here, for someone also most likely a colleague, he uses a similar design system, representing an allegorical chemist surrounded by the tools of his trade. The poster is a tour-de-force, turning laboratory equipment into decorative elements, such as the thermometer, bunsen burners, and beekers along the bottom, and the mortar and pestle. The Latin heading "Love Conquers All" is the rather romanticized credo of a dedicated scientist serving humanity. The only curious item in this otherwise impeccable design is the black cat, normally a symbol of alchemy and black magic. DFP II 1020, l'Affiche Belge p. 49.
