?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
DESIGNER UNKNOWN CENTENNIAL COMMEMORATION AT PHILADELPHIA. Color woodcut poster. 1876 30 1/4x44 1/2 inches, 77x113 cm. Condition B+: repaired tears, abrasions and restoration along vertical and horizontal folds; creases in margins and image. The Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was the first official World's Fair in the United States. An event of unprecedented size and popularity, some accounts attest that almost 20% of the American population visited. Officially entitled The International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and products of the Soil and Mine, everyone knew it as the celebration of 100 years of American independence. The exhibition generated mountains of keepsakes, souvenirs and promotional material. A profusion of black and white bird's-eye-views, engravings and lithographs of the fairgrounds and exposition buildings are available, but to our knowledge no other poster was issued to advertise the event. The legend "Three millions of colonists on a strip by the sea: Now forty millions of freemen ruling from ocean to ocean," also appears on coins and medallions that were sold at the fair. John Maass, information officer for the city of Philadelphia during the 1976 bicentennial celebrations, and author of The Glorious Enterprise, wrote in a catalogue for a Smithsonian exhibition on 1876. "The generation of 1876 . . . thought of the 18th century as the Bad Old Times, and they gloried in their country that had come so far since. [This poster] was a graphic image of those convictions. On the left was a ragged band in front of dismal log cabins . . . on the right stood a stalwart group in a new town. The spirit of 1876 was part of the universal Victorian spirit of optimism. It meant pride in the present, and absolute confidence in an even greater future" (Rome News Tribune, May 12, 1976). It is interesting to note that both images on the poster portray an African American as part of the populace.
