?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
SAM HYDE HARRIS (1889-1977) AMERICA'S MOST BEAUTIFUL TRAINS / TO SAN FRANCISCO / SOUTHERN PACIFIC. Tempera maquette on board with framed pencil study. Circa 1941. 39x26 1/2 inches, 99x67 1/4 cm. Condition A-: light staining in upper margin; unobtrusive abrasions in upper image. Framed. Harris was born in England and moved to Los Angeles when he was 15. His career began as a commercial artist, painting notices on sides of buildings, creating signs and billboards, designing posters and typography and more. In 1920, he was hired by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company to design posters. He also worked for Southern Pacific. In the 1930s, "streamlined trains were among the most striking, visible and accessible examples of Modernism" in America (Zega p. 104). "The streamliner was perfectly suited to the poster medium; its smooth airflow profile offered the prospect of a respite from America's stylistic preoccupation with realism" (ibid). These four sleek streamlined GS-2 engines, marked by their red and orange Daylight colors, ran the route between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the early 1940s. To the best of our knowledge this image was never turned into a poster, suggesting it was a speculative work by the artist which the railroad did not accept. Not in Harris.
