?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
LMS. 1928. 41x281/4 inches. L. Danel, Lille. Condition B+: restoration, repaired tears and overpainting in margins and corners; creases along vertical and horizontal folds; creases in image. Working repeatedly for Railway companies, Cassandre came to use and glorify just about all of the elements that repersented the rail world. For the British L.M.S. company he did two projects, a large close-up of speeding locomotive wheels, which the company refused and which he ended up proudly self-producing, and this one. Here, a giant switch bar is placed in the forefront of a series of rails, which, true to Cassandre's love of perspective, are running to meet at a distant, unseen point beyond the upper right hand corner of the image. "The switch bar's disproportionately large dimensions and its realistic rendering accentuate the poster's depth" (Mouron p. 52). The white of the rails evokes the shine of the metal, "LMS" is spelled out in firey red, like the furnace of an engine, and the letters vibrate within their shimmering white border, a technique seldom used by Cassandre and often seen in the posters of Loupot. This copy bears an uncommon ink-stamp from the Chemins de fer du Nord stating that it has passed quality control and can only be posted by the railroad's agents on the railroad's own sites (see also lots 16 and 17 which bear the same stamps). Mouron / Cassandre pl. 19, Suntory 51, p. 75, Reina Sofia p. 160.
