?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
EUGENE GRASSETNAPOLEON / THE CENTURY MAGAZINE. 1894. 30 1/2x20 3/4 inches. The Century Co. Condition B+: minor discolorations and tears at edges; creases in image. Paper. On an olive bluff overlooking the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon in gray and red is astride a large white horse against a background of fiery orange and yellow. With the poster craze gaining momentum at the end of the 19th century in America, publishers would actually go over to Europe to recruit the famous French posterists to ply their craft in the New World. Grasset was one of the first called, and by 1894 he had already designed at least four posters for American publishers. However, this work for the Century, known as both "The Wooly Horse" and "The Sun of Austerlitz" far surpassed all of his earlier American work. Writing for The Poster<> magazine in November 1900, Scotson-Clark declared that "this was the best poster Grasset ever did," and added that the printer had assured him that 14 stones had been used in the poster's production. Just for this magazine Grasset created four posters, one featuring this identical image with different text, one version of this poster in a massive three sheet siz,e and one depicting "Napoleon in Egypt", Keay p. 6, Margolin p. 35 (var), Maitres 126, Abdy p. 123.
