?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
WAGONS-LITS / 2EME CLASSE. 1930. 391/4x241/4 inches. L. Danel, Lille. Condition B+: restoration in margins; repaired tear along vertical fold, affecting image; vertical and horizontal folds. For the Wagons-Lits (a sleeping car company), Cassandre chooses an "unquestionably persuasive," (Mouron p. 69), symbolic, and poetic approach. Rather than focusing on the sleeping car, or the internal trappings of night travel by rail, Cassandre depicts the evening outside of the carriage, showing the deep blue sky pierced by an eye-like red signal along the rails. "The breath-takingly simple device of a red light glowing in the foggy darkness of a railroad siding is perfectly consistent with our poetically charged experience of looking out the window of a speeding night express" (ibid). It is an elegant approach for an invitation to travel by night. The poster exists with different text variants, but this one is the least cluttered and best. This copy bears the ink stamp of the Chemins de fer du Nord. Mouron / Cassandre pl. 24, Suntory 54, p. 78, Reina Sophia p. 170.
