?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
BERN HILL (1911-1977) CAPITAL CITIES ROUTE. Circa 1952. 23 3/4x18 inches, 60 1/4x45 3/4 cm. Condition A-: restoration along repaired tears and creases along horizontal folds; minor restored loss in upper right corner. Bern Hill was a graphic designer and painter. "At the end of 1949, General Motors' Electro-Motive Division embarked on a rather radical advertising campaign which included vertical format streamline style paintings for the covers of Railway Age [Magazine]" (Vintage Rails, January / February 1998, p. 64). Between 1950 and 1956, Hill painted 65 paintings for this series. "Electro-Motive also produced a series of very high-grade posters of Hill's paintings that were overwritten by the marketing theme for that particular railroad . . . it is unknown if all 65 paintings were turned into posters . . . Hill's assignment was to portray the 'feel' of each railroad in a scene that often captured the landscape of the individual road and gave the viewer the sense of that road's missions - freight, passenger or switching" (Railroad Heritage, No. 6, 2002, p. 10).
