En L'An 2000: Aerial Lawn Tennis, French Futurist Chromolithograph Card
At the fin-de-siècle, France buzzed with techno-optimism — flight was imminent, leisure was expanding, and the year 2000 felt like a utopian playground. This delightful chromolithograph imagines bourgeois sportsmen and sportswomen strapped to personal glider-wings, playing lawn tennis suspended in mid-air above a manicured estate. Part of the celebrated 'En L'An 2000' series, it captures Belle Époque confidence that technology would liberate daily life into something magnificently absurd and elegant.
Charming and inventive rather than lurid, this card trades pulp menace for Belle Époque whimsy — the spectacle of airborne tennis is genuinely delightful but firmly genteel. Its imagination is high; its drama is low.
“EN L'AN 2000 Le Lawn-Tennis.”
