Item #4256 Air France. Lucien Boucher.

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Air France.

[France, circa 1947]. Chromolithograph, 20.5” x 35”, mounted on masonite and in apparently original 1940s frame. CONDITION: Good, occasional minor nicks and scratches, as well as light discoloration.

An unusually beautiful pictorial advertising map, by a leading French poster designer specializing in cartographic images.

This vivid pictorial world map represents numerous flight routes from France to North America, South America, Europe, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East, and even Iceland. Imaginative illustrations are distributed across land and sea, including such subjects as an indigenous queen in South America, a Native American warrior in North America, steam and sailing ships as well as vessel in the form of a dragon propelled by oars, and an Inuit hunter sizing up reindeer in Greenland. The wildlife indigenous to various regions appears throughout, including tigers, a lion, a giraffe. ostriches, polar bears, and exotic fish. A lovely cartouche appears in the lower left corner consisting of a view of the ocean with waves rising up on the right and a cliff rising on the left to form a border, which is surmounted by woman riding a Pegasus-like creature with a sea-serpent’s tail. White planes are shown flying in each and every direction. Swirling, colorful banners identify each of the oceans.

Between 1934–1962, commercial poster artist and illustrator Lucien Boucher (1889–1971)—fondly referred to as "Monsieur Planisphere"—designed various maps for Air France depicting the company’s global flight routes. The design of the example offered here, using pastel colors set against a background of black seas and dark green continents, is particularly striking.

Item #4256

Price: $1,250.00

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