310155 PICTORIAL SHEETS Maker: Gustave Silbermann, Strasbourg. ARMÉE FRANÇAISE. VOLTIGEURS DE LA GARDE IMPÉRIALE (French army. Mobile grenadiers of the Imperial Guard). No. 25. 2 rows, head-to-head, with each 13 soldiers standing to attention. Design: Charles Winter, Strasbourg (?). Color line block, enhanced with gilt and silver. 287x506 mm. Backs: Plain, without imprint. Circa 1855.
Lit.: Martin [1950] pp. 50 ff.; Ryan [1995] p. 31.
Duchartre/Saulnier [1925] p. 164 tell the following anecdote over the advertising at the back which exactly is: Plus de va-nu-pieds / Cordonnerie Piron / 25, rue Piron, Dijon / Cheu l’Antoëne [Never more barefooted (va-nu-pieds = have-not), shoemaker Piron [...] At Antoine’s]. Said shoemaker married his neighbour, a stationer, in circa 1910. He found at her premises a lot of Silbermann’s sheets, decided to have them printed at the back with an ad of his own and handed them out to his customers as a bonus. An amateur heard of it and succeeded in convincing the shoemaker to sell him the rest of his stock.
Pasted on paper, yet the concealed printed ad of the shoemaker Piron from Dijon at the back shines through in light-grey, a faint waterstain in the bottom left corner, cancelled collector’s stamp (Sammlung Heiner Vogel) at the back.

$ 283.01