?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
WILLIAM H. BRADLEY (1868-1962) VICTOR BICYCLES / OVERMAN WHEEL COMPANY. 1896. 621/2x391/4 inches. Condition B+: overpainting and restoration in margins and lower text; repaired tears and creases in text; abrasions in image. Framed. This image first appeared as an ad on the back of Harper's Weekly Christmas Issue, December 7, 1895. It is "Bradley's best-known advertisement for the Overman Wheel Company . . . the depiction of three women on bicycles was widely distributed in ads and posters of various sizes and colors in both the United States and abroad. It was followed by a campaign comprising other Bradley advertisements and posters that continued for several years." (Koch p. 52) This is Bradley's largest poster and is a lithographic and compositional tour-de-force. A large, intricate and ornate decorative border surrounds the image, and the typography has been removed to the extreme top and bottom of the image so as not to disrupt the graphic. And that graphic is a pure Bradley flight-of-fancy, with three female bike riders with flaming orange hair, pedaling their mounts amidst swirling, circular plants, whose curves echo the round bicycle tires and whose overall image is very erotic and Beardsley-esque. It is an extraordinary image and one of Bradley's most spectacular posters. Koch p. 53.
