The elegant forms and brilliant colours of Jules Cheret’s advertisements became one of the most admired and iconic of Parisian art, immortalizing the ebullient days of the Belle Epoque before the First World War changed the spirit of Europe forever. It is really to Cheret that posterity owes the concept of the advertising poster as an art form.

Previously posters for street advertising had been conceived almost entirely in terms of lettering. Cheret’s revolutionary idea was that the impact should be made through pictorial imagery printed in colour lithography. At first Cheret could find no one to back his idea until he met the perfumier Eugene Rimmel in London.  Rimmel was attracted by Cheret’s idea, the style of his art and his enthusiasm, and decided to fund him to establish a colour lithographic printing studio in Paris with a press large enough to create the wall-scale images.  The Atelier Cheret, which soon took on the name of Imprimerie Chaix, became one of the most important poster studios of the late nineteenth century in Paris.

When Cheret established his poster studio in the 1870’s, his studies of fashionable girls soon became a familiar and much admired aspect of the streets of Paris. Known as Cherettes, elegant, exuberant and often daring, these figures influenced an entire generation of women who previously had been limited to two dimensional representations – puritan or prostitute.

Although Cheret’s first lithographs were for street wall posters, he quickly adapted his work to the smaller format of posters for café interiors. Les Affiches Illustrés consisted of a selection of some of the most important of Cheret’s posters by some of Paris’s most influential artists.  Printed by the artist in 1896, it effectively serves as a retrospective of his oeuvre. In the following year, Cheret produced Les Affiches étrangères illustrées showcasing poster art from around the world.

Please click on an image to see it in high-resolution with details of the work itself. For the full list of original antique Cheret posters available,  please do contact us.

Ukiyo-e advertisement for Kubuki Theatre. Audience with the Master.

Depicting a scene from the Viktor Jose novel with the courtesan Alice Lamy, Baron de Rozenfeld and Lord Bath in the Cafe Anglais.

Longchamp Racecourse. Advertisement for the prestigious Prix de la Porte Maillot.

Ukiyo-e advertisement for Kubuki Theatre.Samurai and Priests.

Theatre de la Porte Saint-Martin. Advertisement for Victorien Sardou’s life of the Byzantine Empress Theodora played by Sarah Bernhard. Designed by Manuel Orazi and August Francois-Mariet Gorguet.

Ukiyo-e advertisement for Kubuki Theatre. Winter Garden.

Marquet Ink. Advertisement designed by Eugene Grasset. Known as the Father of Art Nouveau, Grasset’s ‘Maidens’ became emblematic of the style.

Cover for the satirical German weekly by Thomas Theodore Heine.

Cover by Dudley Hardy for the illustrated weekly.

Advertisement for the Exposition of Eugene Grasset, one of the great innovators of Art Nouveau design.

Cover for the Women’s edition by the American illustrator A.R. Gifford.

Christmas edition by the Art Noveau artist Eugene Grasset.

Aperitif digestif. Maison de Vent.

Seule Antiseptique en Vente Parout. Advertisement by the impressionist painter Leo Gausson.

l’Opera International advertisement for the Gala of the History of Theatre 1886 by Eugene Grasset.

Exposition of Henri-Gabriel Ibels, member of Les Nabis (The Prophets), an influential group of vant Garde artists.

Advertisement for the popular concert hall’s production of George Bertrand’s Animated Puppets, by Cheret.

1895 cover by the typographer Will Bradley for the American trade journal The Inland Printer.

By the Art Noveou artist and interior designer Henri Privat-Livemont.

Poster by Louis Rhead.

Cover by Hyland Ellis.

Advertisement poster designed by the sequential illustrator Henri Gerbault.

Announcement for four varieties of Indian Tea – Zenana, Palais Indien, Maharala and Grand Mogul.

Advertisement for the hotel near the popular church of Saint-Jean du Doigt on the coast of Brittany.

Advertisement for the Drury Lane pantomime by Dudley Hardey, a pioneer of the ‘artistic poster’ which was seen to elevate the genre.

Advertisement for the freight company’s new London route for perishables. After Gustave Fraipont.

Designed by Herbert McNair, Margaret and Francis MacDonald, who with Charles Rennie MacIntosh were known as ‘The Four’ of Scottish Art Nouveau.

Advertisement for the celebrated spa’s summer Fetes des Fleurs.

Part of the ‘Four Arts’ experimental series by Jules Cheret.

By the acclaimed artist Dudley Hardy.

Advertisement for an exhibition by the artists’ group Le Sillon by Fernand Toussaint.

Advertisement for popular singers by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, an artist of the Montmartre circle.

Advertisement for the New York City theatre on Madison Avenue and 27th Street opened in 1890.

Part of the ‘Four Arts’ experimental series by Jules Cheret.

Chap Book Thanksgiving Number. Cover for the short lived American Literary magazine.