?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
DESIGNER UNKNOWN (POSSIBLY GEORGES LEPAPE) FEUILLETS D'ART. Circa 1916-1919. 47x311/2 inches. Wall, Paris. Condition B+: restoration and restored losses along vertical and horizontal folds. In 1919 Lucien Vogel, the publisher of La Gazette du Bon Ton, Conde Nast and Vogue launched a haute-luxury magazine Les Feuillets d'Art. With Frantz Jourdain at its head and Edmond Moussie and Michel Dufet, it targeted, and achieved, a high cultural and modernist level. It was divided into Feuillets (leaves), one for painting, one for drawing, poetry, music, literature, etc. Yet, knowing the background of the magazine, this unrecorded poster is somewhat of a mystery. On the left side of the bottom margin there is a Visa number (16 indicating 1916). During World War I, all printed posters had to pass through a censor's bureau and those cleared were given a Visa number. The only possible explanation for the three year discrepancy between when the poster was printed and when the magazine was launched is that Vogel was unrealistically optimistic about the end of the war and had his project ready in 1916. The portrait of a woman, reminiscent of classical imagery, her head adorned with laurels, could be the work of Georges Lepape. He was a close friend of Vogel's and worked with him regularly, and was certainly an active artist in Paris in 1916. The line of the drawing is very similar to his style, but it is impossible to be certain. Regardless of its historical context, explanation and artist, this is certainly an important document of the early Art Deco period.
