Picture Posters/Chapter 3

by Charles Hiatt

 

CHAPTER III.

THE PICTORIAL POSTER IN FRANCE. THE WORK OF CHÉRET, GRASSET, AND TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

So many contemporary French artists are designing posters, that a single chapter dealing with them all would be of an alarming length. I have therefore, in the first place, separated from their fellows three who seem to me curiously individual and worthy of careful consideration. Of the men whose names head this chapter, pre-eminence is due, for various reasons, to Jules Chéret, whose position, in the matter of poster-designing, is quite without parallel.

It may be that men of rarer, of more fascinating, talent have now and again devoted themselves to the affiche; but none of them can compare with Chéret in the magnitude and curiosity of his achievement. Many have produced charming wall pictures: nobody, save Chéret, has made an emphatic mark on the aspect of a metropolis. Paris, without its Chérets, would be Paris without one of its most pronounced characteristics; Paris, moreover, with its gaiety of aspect materially diminished. The great masses of variegated colour formed by Chéret's posters greet one joyously as one passes every hoarding, smile at one from the walls of every café, arrest one before the windows of every kiosque. The merits of the Saxoléine lamp, the gaieties of the Moulin Rouge, the charms of Loie Fuller, the value of a particular brand of cough-lozenges, are insisted upon with a good-humoured vehemence of which Jules Chéret alone appears to know the secret. Others, in isolated cases, have possibly achieved more compelling decorations, but none can pretend to a success so uniform and so unequivocal. Few men as richly endowed with the gift of decoration would I have been content to produce work which, were it not for the portfolio of the collector, would be of an entirely ephemeral character. It must be irritating to the artist to watch the gradual destruction of his chefs-d'œuvre, condemned as they are to be torn by every wind, soaked by every shower, blistered by the sun, blurred by the fog. It is natural that he should turn his eyes longingly to the comparative permanence of canvas, marble, or bronze; and it says much for Chéret's confidence in his artistic mission for his nice realization of his possibilities and limitations, that he has remained faithful to the affiche for over twenty years. Now and

 

DESIGN BY CHÉRET.

 

again, it is true, he has turned aside to do work of more universally recognized and more pretentious a character, and the very fact that he has touched scarcely anything which he has not adorned, emphasises his fidelity to a branch of art until quite recently despised and held of little moment. It is, indeed, mainly owing to this devotion, to this lavish expense of talent, that the poster is not even now considered beneath the dignity of the collector. The judicious, as soon as their eyes fell upon Chéret's vast lithographs, decided that he was no mere colour-printer's hack, but an artist whose work would have to be reckoned with. There was something positively alluring in the spectacle of a man who calmly placed his gift at the disposal of the tradesman, who accepted without murmur the limitations which the tradesman imposed upon him. It is possible that, had it not been for the circumstances of his life, the streets of Paris would have remained undecorated, so far as Chéret was concerned, to this day. Commencing as the humblest of lithographers, Chéret did not take up art of set intention, but passed irresistibly, though it may be unconsciously, into it. After long years of patient and tedious work as an ordinary lithographer, at the dawn of the year 1866, he commenced what was destined to be the most notable series of pictorial posters in existence, a series containing over a thousand items, and one which happily has yet to close. It is doubtless the conditions of his early life, the lessons learned while under the yoke of trade, that have enabled Chéret to appreciate to the full that the first business of an advertisement is to advertise. Avoiding, therefore, all subtle harmonies, he goes in for contrasts of colour, violent, it is true, but victorious in their very violence. Blazing reds, hard blues, glowing yellows, uncompromising greens, are flung together, apparently haphazard, but in reality after the nicest calculation, with the result that the great pictures, when on the hoardings, insist positively on recognition. One might as well attempt to ignore a fall of golden rain, as to avoid stopping to look at them; they are so many riots of colour, triumphant in their certainty of fascinating and bewildering the passerby.

As may be imagined, Chéret's skill has fullest scope when dealing with the lightest and gayest subjects: a cascade de clowns— to borrow a phrase of Huysman—an entrance of ballet girls; a joyous troupe of children, contented because toy-laden; these, and the like, are subjects most congenial to him. His style is essentially the outcome of the day. It possesses no decorative forerunners; it is not a thing derived; its parents are the gaieties of modern Paris. It is intensely actual, and in its actuality lies, it

 

DESIGN BY CHÉRET.

seems to me, its greatest claim to consideration. It is infused with a somewhat hectic gaiety which holds a not unimportant place in the lives of us suffering from this "sick disease of modern life." Of the sick disease itself, Chéret gives no hint. He is unflagging in his vivacity, unswerving in his insistence on the joie de vivre; instead of pondering over the inevitable sorrow of life, he busies himself depicting the naïve grace of the child, the elegance of the mondaine. His gifts lead him inevitably to such subjects. His merit as a draughtsman lies, in part, in vivacious rather than cored line: gaiety, as we have seen, is the chief quality of his colour: his composition is remarkable on account of the piquancy and appropriateness of its detail. He chooses with unerring fidelity the subjects suited to his temperament and his gifts. These subjects are not of infinite variety, and it follows that if one sees a great quantity of Chéret's work together, one becomes aware of a certain feeling of monotony. One can be satiated even of Chéret's gaiety and joyousness.

To attempt any account of Chéret's thousand and more posters, is obviously impossible in any but an elaborate monograph devoted exclusively to him. I can do no more here than comment on a few of the most striking. It may be stated generally, that while the earlier ones are rarest because most difficult to procure, the more recent designs show the artist at his best. A mastery of chromo-lithography such as his, cannot be obtained without many essays, some of which are foredoomed to failure. In addition, Chéret has gradually improved alike in the splendour of his colour, and the disposal of his pattern. Perhaps he has never been happier in his treatment of children than in one or two of the "Buttes-Chaumont" series. The joy of the little ones in the possession of their new playthings is contagious. Utterly different in kind, though not less conspicuously successful, is "Les Coulisses de l'Opéra au Musée Grevin," a delightfully piquant representation of a group of premières danseuses in the traditional costume. As a specimen of amazingly effective and strangely beautiful colour, it would be difficult to exceed the "Loie Fuller" series; while, in the matter of pert gracefulness, Chéret has done nothing more delicious than the chic little lady in the yellow dress who smiles at you in the "Pantomimes Lumineuses." Anybody who could resist her fascinations would be a rival to St. Anthony. No collector of course, will overlook the great series of affiches which Chéret has contrived for the Folies Bergère, the Moulin Rouge, the Alcazar d'Eté, and similar places of amusement.

In order to sum up his talent as a designer of posters, Chéret has produced four decorative panels, which, although without

 

DESIGN BY CHÉRET.

 

DESIGN BY CHÉRET (TOUR EIFFEL).

 

DECORATIVE PANEL, DESIGNED BY CHÉRET (COMEDY).

 

DECORATIVE PANEL, DESIGNED BY CHÉRET (PANTOMIME).

 

DECORATIVE PANEL, DESIGNED BY CHÉRET (MUSIC).

 

DECORATIVE PANEL, DESIGNED BY CHÉRET (DANCING).

lettering, are posters to all intents and purposes, and would take their places on a hoarding quite admirably. The subjects are most happily chosen; who, better than Chéret, could symbolize, in manner light and fantastic, music, comedy, pantomime, and dancing? The designs gain immensely, insomuch as they are not disfigured with a legend, for, in spite of the fact that the disposal of the lettering is of the very essence of a poster, Chéret, for some reason known only to himself, leaves that detail of his work to another designer, with results by no means uniformly fortunate. Before leaving Chéret, it is only just to him to point out that his work loses more than that of almost any other artist, in the process of reproduction in black and white. It is impossible to convey any idea of his amazing colour by means of a halftone block, and therefore, fewer reproductions of his designs are included in these pages than might be expected. Needless to say, he suffers greatly from more or less unskilful imitators. For this reason, combined with the fact that he is engaged on a series of decorations for the Paris Hôtel de Ville, his excursions into the art of the hoarding will be less frequent than has been the case hitherto.

To turn from Chéret to Eugène Grasset, is to turn to an artist in whose art career the poster is merely an incident. Grasset is a paragon of versatility; there are literally no; bounds to his comprehensiveness. Besides being a painter of distinction, he has designed everything, from stained glass to book-covers, from piano-cases to menus. Unlike Chéret, he has been profoundly impressed by the work of old decorative designers; he has certainly not disdained to borrow; his borrowings, however, have been at once legitimate and intelligent. The Japanese, the old Italians, and in a less degree, the ancient Greeks, have been laid under contribution, with results which, if not amazingly original, are at least delightful. It would be idle to pretend that, from the standpoint of the advertiser, Grasset is the equal of Chéret. His sense of beauty, his passion for decoration, make it impossible for him to achieve the daring and victorious colour which is so effective in the work of Chéret. A panel of his posters, side by side with a panel of those of Chéret, is as a beautiful and somewhat quiet-hued wall-paper to a cascade of flowers of every conceivable colour. While, however, this is an important matter from the advertiser's point of view, it is of little moment to the collector, whose primary object is to fill his portfolios with things of beauty. At times, indeed, Grasset does achieve irresistible advertisement; nobody, for instance, could overlook the superb representation of Sarah Bernhardt as "Jeanne d'Arc," standing with splendid disdain amidst a forest of spears

 

DESIGN BY GRASSET.

 

DESIGN BY GRASSET.

and a shower of arrows, and waving above her head a great silken banner embroidered with the fleur-de-lis. Again, one lingers before the "Fêtes de Paris," attracted by its

DESIGN BY GRASSET FOR THE SALON DES CENT.

fine decorative qualities. Of an entirely different kind is the delicious little poster which the artist did for an exhibition of his own work at the Salon des Cent in 1894; in the naïve simplicity of the thing, combined with its fine decorative quality, there is a hint of Botticelli and the old Italians. The contrast between this poster, slightly archaic as it is, and the realistic "Odéon Théatre" is complete. The latter represents a charmingly graceful girl, in a delicious modern gown, watching a play. She is accompanied by a highly-proper looking matron, whose self-importance is enhanced by the possession of a handsome dress and a wealth of jewels. Very pretty, again, is the "Librairie Romantique," with the facade of Nôtre Dame in the background. Less worthy of Grasset is the "A la Place Clichy," which, in spite of the majestic old oriental who descants on the merits of an elaborate carpet to a critical European, is somewhat commonplace. Among the other productions of this artist, some of them excellent, but not calling for special description, are the "Histoire de France," "Napoléon," "Chocolat Mexicain," and "L'Encre Marquet," as well as those done to advertise a work on the capital cities of the world, and the exhibition of the productions of French decorative artists held in 1893 at the Grafton Gallery. A bill designed for the South of France Railway Company is curious, insomuch as it is unlike the other productions of its designer. It consists of a series of pleasant little landscapes wreathed in the characteristic fruits and flowers of the Riviera. The colour is striking and the

 

DESIGN BY GRASSET.

 

DESIGN BY GRASSET

poster full of sunshine. It is one of the merits of Grasset that he is not, even in what is to him so small a matter as poster-designing, the slave of a single style,

DESIGN BY GRASSET FOR "L'ENCRE MARQUET."

although all his works are obviously from the same hand. Before leaving him, it should in fairness be stated that the lettering of his bills is ever appropriate and decorative. True artist that he is, he neglects no detail whatsoever; in the smallest thing

DESIGN BY GRASSET ("CAPITAL CITIES").

as in the greatest, he is not merely scrupulous, but even fastidious. It is no dispraise of Chéret and Grasset to say that the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is more fascinating than theirs. The designs of the former two are alike in

DESIGN BY GRASSET FOR THE EXHIBITION HELD BY FRENCH DECORATIVE ARTISTS AT THE GRAFTON GALLERY IN 1893.

that they are charming, though charming in manner entirely different; Lautrec's productions, alluring and powerful as they are, can by no stretch of the word be so scribed. He does not seek to attract you by joyousness of colour or grace of pattern, but rather to compel your attention by the force of his realism or the curiosity of his grotesqueness. For his posters are at once realistic and grotesque; they are delineations of life as seen by a man who, possessing the most acute powers of observation, is poignantly impressed by the incongruities of modern life, the physical peculiarities of modern men. He has some points of similarity with Hogarth, with Rowlandson, and the like, but his art is quite non-moral; he has no mission to depict vice as either hideous or ridiculous. His extraordinary "Reine de Joie," perhaps the most powerful, and certainly the least agreeable, of his posters, is a statement of fact rather than a criticism. This great bill, owing to the vehemence of the expression on the faces of the three people it represents, to the wonderful vigour of its line, to its extraordinarily effective, though simple, colour, is one of the most powerful designs of the kind ever accomplished. It may be doubted whether any book has been advertised in so unforgettable a manner as La Reine de Joie.

For the Paris café chantant artiste who possesses the charming name of Jane Avril, this designer has devised a grotesque decoration, which could not fail imperiously to call attention to her talents as a dancer. Inspired it may be by her name, it may be

 

DESIGN BY TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

by a happy accident, Lautrec has employed a scheme of colour in which are found the pale

DESIGN BY TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

sulphur hue of the primrose, the deeper yellow of the daffodil, the crimson of the tulip. Once having seen this work, the name, and indeed something of the personality, of Jane Avril is impressed on ones mind. Moreover, one easily recalls this unassuming poster vividly, when works of art, consecrated by the admiration of generations of critics, are quite forgotten, or only faintly remembered. No man of more passionate and curious talent than Aristide Bruant has ever devoted himself to the business of light amusement, and it was no doubt quite congenial to Lautrec to advertise the performances which he gives in his cabaret. Again, the artist's picture of another entertainer, Caudieux, represented in the act of quitting the stage, is masterly for its indication of movement and its powerful characterization. Bad from the advertisers point of view, but most interesting from that of the collector, is the extremely rare "Le rendu," a production which for weird and intense tragedy compares to advantage with any of the artist's posters. Scarcely less rare, though by no means so important, is the affiche done to advertise the performances of La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge. A far more agreeable design is the "Divan Japonais," in which a fearful and wonderful girl, accompanied by a man as fashionable as he seems to be imbecile, is represented under the spell of Yvette Guilbert, whose tall, thin figure is seen across the orchestra, her arms, in the famous black gloves, being

 

DESIGN BY TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

 

DESIGN BY TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

 

DESIGN BY TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

 

DESIGN BY TOULOUSE-LAUTREC.

crossed in front of her with characteristic nonchalance.

It is in no way astonishing that Mile. Guilbert has strongly attracted Lautrec, and that he has frequently made her the subject of his work. No music-hall performer has, so far, approached this brilliant woman in ability or in artistic prestige. Like Patti and Sarah Bernhardt, she is implored to testify to the merits of every brand of soap or every new perfume; like them her reputation extends beyond the bounds of her native place, and she is the admired of several foreign capitals. If the flower of French art and literature assemble to honour Zola, the proceedings are incomplete without a song from her; if the fastidious De Goncourt is presented with the rosette of the Legion of Honour, what more fitting than that she should deliver a recitation? In some degree she sees the life of modern Paris in the same light as Lautrec; her wonderful delineations are realistic as are his, though their realism is touched with a suspicion of the grotesque. Amongst other things, she has inspired Lautrec to a series of illustrations remarkable alike in drawing and colour; and he has not disdained to design lithographs to adorn the covers of different items of her répertoire. Owing to his kindness, I am enabled to reproduce, as the frontispiece to this volume, a sketch for a poster which he designed for her, but which, unfortunately, has never got beyond the experimental stage. It seems to me a specially interesting example of a remarkable talent applied to a very congenial subject. The posters of Lautrec are something more than works of art; they are human documents strangely eloquent of their moment. For this reason, their value may be more permanent than that of the productions either of Chéret or Grasset, delightfully fantastic as are the former, charmingly decorative as are the latter.