#belle epoque
Liberator Cycles & Automobiles. 1899. Pal.
54 5/8 x 76 7/8 in./138.7 x 195.3 cm
It’s one of the most famous posters in the world: often copied, often poorly. This is the original – in the original large format of the design – and this one, in particular, has vibrant coloration and exquisite detail that we rarely see. (Note our Valkyrie’s chain-mail miniskirt, with textured rings and metallic shimmer.) Pal’s triumph here is the culmination of the “Bicycle Craze” of the 1890s, which indeed delivered liberation for female riders and sparked the modern women’s rights movement. This is the original large format of the design.
Available at auction June 26. Learn More>>
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Automobile Club de France/5me Salon. 1902. Privat Livemont.
39 1/8 x 51 1/8 in./99.3 x 130 cm
Personifying the 5th Paris Auto Show is a regal-looking Art Nouveau goddess, proudly sitting at the helm of the latest open-air automobile. According to the side panel, bicycles, boats, and hot air balloons were also on view.
Available at auction June 26. Learn More>>
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American Crescent Cycles. 1899. Frederick Winthrop Ramsdell.
42 ¾ x 62 7/8 in./108.6 x 159.8 cm
Ramsdell studied at the Art Students League of New York, then left for Paris, where his work was shown at the Paris Salon between 1891 and 1898. This was the sweet spot for the French advertising poster, of course, and especially the work of Eugene Grasset, whose style Ramsdell appropriates in spectacular style.
Available at auction June 26.
Learn more about our selection of rare bicycle posters >>
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Cycles Gladiator. ca. 1895. Anonymous.
51 7/8 x 38 1/8 in./131.7 x 96.8 cm
A lithographic masterpiece. Acclaimed as one of the world’s greatest posters, this image of a flame-tressed sylph, propelled among the stars by the Gladiator and its winged pedals, has been appropriated throughout culture ever since its debut in 1895. Shockingly, it remains anonymous, despite the presence of faint initials L.W. in the lower right corner.
Available at auction June 26. Learn More>>
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Caudieux. 1893. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
36 ¼ x 50 5/8 in./92.2 x 128.5 cm
A well-loved cabaret personality in Montmartre, Caudieux was a large, floppy ball of a man, shown here with coattails billowing behind him as he exits, stage right. As the actor purses his lips in self-satisfaction after what we can imagine to be a fine performance, a hollow-cheeked audience member gawks curiously up from the orchestra pit. Feinblatt calls this “a study in dynamic motion and concentrated energy… and his bustling sweep across the boards is an unparalleled rendering of movement among Lautrec’s posters” (Wagner, p. 20).
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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Brooklyn Museum. 1920. Alphonse Mucha.
12 1/8 x 19 1/8 in./23.8 x 48.5 cm
In 1921, a retrospective of Mucha’s work, featuring the first five canvases of the Slav Epic, was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, following a very successful showing in Chicago. This exquisite poster for the exhibition, in red, green and black inks, features a girl as symbol of the Slavic myth, holding a circle of thorns and stars signifying the past and future of the Slav people.
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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Cycles Americains. 1894. Emile Clouet.
51 x 72 ½ in./129.5 x 184.2 cm
Brash and bursting, Clouet’s poster for Cycles Americains certainly plays up the cultural characteristics of New Worlders for dramatic effect. The young woman busts through the canvas in her New York bike with a great shout of “Look at me!” And so we do, as it’s impossible to take one’s eyes off the action, which comes at you head-on.
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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Olympia / Brighton. 1893. Pal.
30 ¾ x 49 3/8 in./78 x 125.3 cm
Just as Pal was arriving to Paris from London, the Olympia was opening its doors to the public. Here, he’s clearly enjoying introducing two Parisian cancan girls to the seashore along Brighton’s famous pier, to promoite Leopold Wenzel’s “grand ballet.”
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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The Seasons. 1896. Alphonse Mucha.
Each: 21 1/8 x 40 ¾ in./53.6 x 103.5 cm
This larger format is rare; rarer still is a large version of the 1896 Seasons with such exceedingly fresh colors! You can feel the chill of Winter, the little birds huddling for warmth; the dewy wakefulness of Spring, fashioning herself a lyre, on which those little birds are expectantly perched; Summer is indolent, sleepy in the heat; but Autumn, Autumn, lush and fecund with her auburn hair, indulges the harvest by plucking the grapes from the vine, straight into her cup. It’s not only the passage of time that makes this series rare: these images were difficult to find even at the time of their publication. The editor of The Poster couldn’t help a reader locate this set back in 1899, concluding: “they are getting scarce” (January 1899, p. 42). This is the larger variant with the Seasons text at bottom.
Available at auction February 25, 2018.
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L’Opéra Garnier de Paris
- Detail of the torchères au tambourin, on the Grand Escalier, engraved by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse.
- The Loggiato of the Opéra
- View from the Loggiato of the Avenue de l’Opéra
- Le Salon du Glacier, reminiscent of the Belle Époque
- TheOpéra Auditorium, with the Marc Chagall ceiling fresco
- The magnificent Grand Foyer, painted by Paul Baudry
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Countess Mathilde Stubenberg and her gorgeous jewelry. 1905
Princess Maria Therese von Thurn und Taxus, née Infanta of Portugal. Early 1900s
