?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,000 - $ 1,500
J. L. LESOURD (DATES UNKNOWN) MOTRICINE / ESSENCE POUR AUTOMOBILES. Circa 1900. 54 1/2x36 3/4 inches, 138 1/2x93 cm. Courmont Freres, Paris. Condition B+: repaired tears and abrasions in margins and image; minor restored loss along bottom edge; restoration along vertical and horizontal folds. Long before gasoline was delivered to vehicles by pumps at stations, it was sold in cans, not unlike oil for lamps. This unexpectedly modern ad for early automobile gasoline suggests the blazing speed that this petrol can deliver to your vehicle. Despite what we may view to be the unwieldy design of the car, it is shown being taken to great speeds. The artist represents the velocity by showing the driver leaning hard into the wheel, the car kicking up dust as it whips down the road, and the lovely passenger clinging to her hat in the wind, as her stole and her dress flail in the slipstream. We can date the poster through the history of the Vacuum Oil Company, which opened up a subsidiary in France in 1899.
