?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
LESLIE RAGAN (1897-1972)
[NEW YORK CENTRAL SYSTEM / THE HIGHLANDS OF THE HUDSON]. Oil maquette. Circa 1943.
35¾x29¾ inches, 90¾x75½ cm. Condition B+: small paint losses along crease at bottom; abrasions and slight aging in image; water stains on verso at bottom, not showing through; horizontal scratch at top corners. Oil on canvas. Framed without glass.
Leslie Ragan designed eleven calendars for the New York Central Railroad between 1942 and 1954. This autumnal masterpiece appeared on the 1944 calendar back with the caption "The Century in the Highlands of the Hudson." The artist depicts the 20th Century Limited, with its iconic engine designed by Henry Dreyfuss, as it winds its way through the Hudson Valley with its purple and orange mountains and amber and yellow foliage. The image is strikingly similar to a 1941 poster Ragan designed promoting the The New Empire State Express as it steams through an autumn landscape. Clearly the artist was so taken with his first iteration that he chose to reimagine it with a more famous locomotive.
![LESLIE RAGAN (1897-1972). [NEW YORK CENTRAL SYSTEM / THE HIGHLANDS OF THE HUDSON]. Oil maquette. Circa 1943. 35¾x29¾ inches, 90¾x75½ cm](https://catalogue.swanngalleries.com/full//105\824105.jpg)
