?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
SEM (DATES UNKNOWN) MUSEE LIVANT BONNE FOIS. 1888. 24 1/4 x 18 1/4inches. E. Lapor. Condition B+: restored losses in corners. Sem began his artistic career in the south of France. By the time he moved to Paris he had already achieved acclaim in Marseille and Bordeaux for his albums of celebrity caricatures. He began work as a press illustrator and received immediate acclaim when he published his first Parisian album of caricatures. These albums ranged from depicting famous patrons at Maxim's to the bourgeois on holiday in Deauville. He also designed a few posters that are more or less enlarged caricatures (see Swann Art Nouveau Auction #1945, lot 95). This charming image, despite being signed by "Sem," is so primitive as a lithograph, and so like a print in its composition, that it is very unlikely to have been done by the same artist. Rather it is an excellent document from the early days of color lithography.
