?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
SANTA FE / EXTRA FAST. Circa 1933. Oil painting on board maquette. 39 1/2x29 1/4 inches. Condition B+: repaired tear through top margin into image. One of the most famous trains of its era The Chief<> was to train travel in the 1930s what the Concorde<> was to air travel in the 1980s. Running from Chicago to Los Angeles, the train was so popular that the word "chief" was used as a verb by Hollywood stars heading West, as in "I chiefed in this morning". Villa, who lived in Los Angeles (under his signature he usually signed L.A.C.A. --the initials of his home) employed a very Art Deco style with this image. The finished poster bore the words "The Chief is still Chief / Fastest to California", and most likely the three shields bore the company's full slogan "Extra Fast / Extra Fine / Extra Fare". This poster is known to exist only through a photograph of the window of a Baltimore & Ohio Railroad office in Louisville Kentucky which was printed in the Santa Fe Magazine<> in May, 1934.
