?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
ANONYMOUS LA GRANDE ROUE DE PARIS. 50 3/4x36 3/4 inches. Condition A-: creases and abrasions in margins and image; vertical and horizontal folds. A gigantic Ferris wheel, La Grande Roue, was one of the main attractions of the 1900 Paris World's Fair. Standing 106 meters high and able to accommodate 1500 people at a time, the machine was a technological tour-de-force. A marvel of engineering, it was comparable to the Eiffel Tower that was built for the 1889 Fair. Once the 1900 Fair ended, the city of Paris debated keeping La Grande Roue as a permanent fixture of the city's skyline. Eventually, however, it was sold to the city of Vienna, where it remains standing to this day. (among its many film appearances was a famous scene in Orson Welles's The Third Man). In an inventive, fetching fin-de-siecle sexually kitschy manner, the artist represents the wheel being supported by two scantily clad giants against the background of a panoramic silhouetted skyline, as would be seen by visitors atop the wheel itself.
