?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,000
ÉDOUARD VUILLARD (1868-1940) BECANE / VIANDE. Circa 1894. 31 1/2x23 3/8 inches, 80x59 1/2 cm. Edw. Ancourt, Paris. Condition A. Framed. Unexamined out of frame. Vuillard was a founding member of the Nabis group, renowned as a painter and printmaker. For this, the only poster he designed, he tried to invent something striking and innovative. The result is a surprising perspective of a bicycle race, with the victor sitting upright on his bicycle in the foreground and other competitors still pedaling furiously around the distant curve in background. The typography, too, is quite creative with green lettering in white boxes and white lettering in green boxes. The product (whose name Becane is a slang word for bicycle) is an alcohol-based, meat extract, reconstituting tonic. This is the only poster produced to promote this product, but the company existed at least through 1900 as newspaper ads from that era can be found touting it for sale. While comparisons have been made to Toulouse-Lautrec's poster for La Chaine Simpson (1896), this image shares more in common with some of the graphics of Pierre Bonnard. Weill p. 34, Art Nouveau p. 85, Le Sport p. 33.
