?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,200 - $ 1,800
F. HUGO D'ALÉSI (1849-1906) CHEMINS DE FER DE L'EST / VENISE. 1899. 41 1/2x29 3/4 inches, 105 1/2x75 1/2 cm. Hugo d'Alési, Paris. Condition B: foxing in margins and image; water stains and replaced losses in lower right margin; creases and repaired punch holes in margins. Mounted on Japan. Romanian-born Hugo d'Alési was one of the earliest artists to design posters for the French railway companies. They were printed using a process similar to chromolithography, called simile-aquarelle ("faux watercolor,") that required up to 20 different colors to render the final image, making them much more richly printed, detailed and painterly than the travel posters from subsequent decades. By some accounts, he designed "hundreds for the railway companies" (Hillion p. 278). It was such an expensive process that it drove the artist into bankruptcy shortly before his premature death. D'Alési's posters caught the eye of many in France and around the world, including Paul Cézanne, who commented, "I should like to do decorative landscapes like Hugo d'Alési, yes, with my small sensibility" (Cezanne p. 232). This tranquil, twilight scene from the Grand Canal is one of only seven travel posters chosen to be included in the Maitres de l'Affiche series. Maitres pl. 171 (var), Manifesta 84, La Mer p. 50 (var).
