?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
F. HUGO D'ALÉSI (1849-1906)
LE DAUPHINÉ / LES GORGES DE LA BOURNE. Circa 1890s.
40 3/4x28 1/2 inches,103 1/2x72 1/2 cm. Hugo d'Alési, Paris. Condition B+: replaced losses, repaired pin holes and extensive overpainting in margins; overpainting in upper image.
Hugo d'Alési's posters were not only used by the French railway companies to encourage travelers to buy tickets on their trains; the images were also repurposed without the names of the train lines and employed pedagogically. His travel advertisements bear the imprint "Affiches simile-aquarelle," while these geographical teaching tools bear the imprint "Tableaux Scolaires." The latter were printed on a higher quality paper than the train posters and bear the name and address of the Parisian paper maker, Vidalon. There are also slight differences in the typography between the posters and the school images, mainly among the titles. The school posters also feature a small crest in the margins. Le Dauphiné is the former name of the French province which today would be recognized as Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes. To promote travel to the region, d'Alési depicts a tiny portion of the extraordinary "balcony road" (completed in 1872) in the gorge carved out of the limestone cliffs by the Bourne River. In the vignette, one sees some of the incredible hanging houses of Pont-en Royans and the Picard Bridge.
