?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
ROBERT E. LEE (DATES UNKNOWN)
SPEED / AMERICAN RAILWAY EXPRESS. 1928.
35x55 inches, 89x139 3/4 cm. Sweeney Litho. Co. Inc., Belleville, New Jersey. Condition A- / B+: reattached along vertical seam; creases, abrasions and minor restoration in margins and image and along folds. Matted and framed.
One in a series of posters the artist designed for the American Railway Express company, each one an unexpected gem of stylized design. Writing in Advertising Outdoors, Best Posters of the Year, 1930, critic Percy Ekhart singled the artist out, mentioning that "through his posters for an express company, Robert E. Lee has made an impression that has made for a higher standard of art in posters" (p. 14). These American Railway Express posters were used on company trucks, which had billboards on either side. By some accounts, the posters were changed as often as every month. American Railway Express came into being during the First World War, when the U.S. Government nationalized the country's shipping and freight industries. Although run by the government, most of the company was owned by American Express, and its president at the time was also the president of American Railway Express.
