Lot 503: Port-Aviation/Gde Quinzaine de Paris.

Port-Aviation/Gde Quinzaine de Paris.
RAYMOND TOURNON (1870-1919)
Affiches E. Bougard, Paris
Cond A.
The propellors had barely stopped turning at the world's first great aviation meet at Reims in August 1909, when an October Fortnight was held at the town of Juvisy's self-styled Port-Aviation some nineteen kilometers south of Paris. Shown in this poster are a high-winged, two-seater Bleriot Model XII monoplane, similar to the machine its inventor had piloted in the first Gordon Bennett race at Reims six weeks previously, and an early-model Wright biplane preparing to take off. Advertised were several Grand Prix, including those offered by the Paris Municipal Council and the Society for the Encouragement of Aviation. A prize was also offered for slow flying. Public interests in the events was overwhelming. Such enormous crowds engulfed the suburban railway system that at one point the trains broke down. Thousands of passengers were stranded, resulting in a stampede that left scores seriously injured. On 18 October, the day after the official closing of the meet, Count Charles de Lambert, a Russian sportsman and inventor, provided an unexpected climax with a forty-nine minute, thirty-nine and three-fifth second flight around the Eiffel Tower on his Wright biplane. It was the first time that an aviator had flown over the city of Paris (Looping the Loop, p. 48).
1909
47 1/2 x 63 in./120.6 x 160 cm