?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
ROGER BRODERS (1883-1953) LA PLAGE DE CALVI. CORSE. 1928. 42x29 3/4 inches, 106 3/4x75 1/2 cm. Lucien Serre & Cie., Paris. Condition B / B+: repaired tears from top edge, some extending into central right image; small losses at top right edge; creases and repaired tears in margins; slight water staining at bottom; colors slightly attenuated. Framed. One of Roger Broders' most recognizable graphic devices was the sweeping curve of the shorelines he depicted in his myriad of travel posters for the French Railways. Broders' design for Calvi Beach, on the northwest coast of the island of Corsica, not only exemplifies this design element, but is considered by many to be the finest beach poster Broders created. Although Calvi is known as the alleged birthplace of Christopher Columbus, and the location where Admiral Horatio Nelson lost his eye, Broders' brightly-colored, Art Deco image depicts an elegantly-attired bathing beauty on the 4 mile long stretch of sand, which spreads out at the foot of the 13th century Citadel. A ship in the background indicates how travelers would make the final leg of their journey on the PLM railway to this island. If the image seems oddly familiar, comfortable and appealing, it may be due to a previously unrecognized subliminal suggestion. Broders has modeled his central figure after Botticelli's famous painting The Birth of Venus. The legs on Broders' beach goddess are identical in stance to those of Venus, and further similarities can be read throughout the image's composition. This is the French version. Broders p. 99, Perry / Broders p. 28, Voyage p. 80, La Mer p. 11, Tourism 95, Furness vol. 8, p. 83.
