Auction Highlights: Rare & Important Travel Posters — November 9, 2023
Swann’s autumn 2023 auction of Rare & Important Travel Posters on November 9 is another wonderful, geographic tour de force, with some of the most compelling and infrequently seen images.
The sale circles the globe: Australia, India, Georgia, Italy, Scotland, Canada, Poland, Norway, and Czechoslovakia—including Richard Teschner‘s early, rare image for travel to Prague via the Austrian Railway, circa 1910, and Milos Endler‘s poster for the Wagons-Lits featuring the Charles Bridge, 1929, and others.
Right: Lot 5: Rhys Williams, Qantas / A New Air Map From the Australian Viewpoint, circa 1939. Estimate $3,000 to $4,000.
Also featured are exceptional depictions of means of transport like Elmer William Pirson‘s Curtiss School of Aviation, 1917; Rhys William‘s Qantas Empire Airways, circa 1938; an original painting featuring a locomotive from the Illinois Central Railroad painted by Bern Hill for General Motors Electro-Motive Division; and a dramatic rendering of the Java Night-Limited Railroad, circa 1930s.
Ocean Liner companies are well represented, with sea-going depictions of Cunard Liners by Odin Rosenvinge, The Red Star Line, by Henri Cassiers, and others.
There is an exceptional assortment of American cities on display, including Chicago and Cleveland (by Leslie Ragan for New York Central), Hollywood and San Francisco (by David Klein—each of these the rare, earlier printings), and New York (by Chesley Bonestell of the New York Central Building and New York / Fly TWA, by Klein).