Jules Chéret

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Jules Chéret (31 May 1836 – 23 September 1932) was a French painter and

Born in Paris to a poor but creative family of artisans, Chéret had a very limited education. At age thirteen, he began a three-year apprenticeship with a lithographer and then his interest in painting led him to take an art course at the École Nationale de Dessin. Like most other fledgling artists, Chéret studied the techniques of various artists, past and present, by visiting Paris museums.

From 1859 to 1866, he was trained in lithography in London, England, where he was strongly influenced by the British approach to poster design and printing. On returning to France, Chéret created vivid poster ads for the

According to the poster collector Ernest Maindron, who wrote the first essay about the illustrated poster in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1884, and later published the first book on the subject (Les Affiches Illustrees) in 1886, Chéret, along with the brothers Léon and Alfred Choubrac, was among the pioneers of the illustrated poster.^[1][2] In the early 1870s, Chéret and the Choubrac brothers reduced the cost of colour lithography introducing technical advances.^[3]

Growing popularity

His works were influenced by the scenes of frivolity depicted in the works of Rococo artists such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Antoine Watteau. So much in demand was he, that he expanded his business to providing advertisements for the plays of touring troupes, municipal festivals, and then for beverages and liquors, perfumes, soaps, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. Eventually he became a major advertising force, adding the railroad companies and a number of manufacturing businesses to his client list.

As his work became more popular and his large posters displaying modestly free-spirited women found a larger audience, pundits began calling him the "father of the women's liberation." Women then had previously been depicted in art as prostitutes or puritans. The women of Chéret's posters, joyous, elegant and lively—'Cherettes', as they were popularly called—were neither. It was freeing for the women of Paris, and heralded a noticeably more open atmosphere in Paris where women were able to engage in formerly taboo activities, such as wearing low-cut bodices and smoking in public. These 'Cherettes' were widely seen and recognised, and a writer of the time said "It is difficult to conceive of Paris without its 'Cheréts' (sic)."^[4]

In 1895, Chéret created the

In 1933 he was honoured with a posthumous exhibition of his work at the prestigious Salon d'Automne in Paris. Over the years, Chéret's posters became much sought after by collectors from around the world.

Selected works

• 
  Palais des Glaces
• 
  Saxoléine,
  Pétrole de sureté
• 
  Taverne Olympia, Restaurant
• 
  Pippermint,
  Get Frères
• 
  Pan,
  a Journal of Satire
• 
  Théâtre de l'Opéra,
  Carnaval 1894
• 
  Hippodrome de la Porte Maillot, Paris Courses
• 
  L'Amant des Danseuses Roman Moderniste
  par Félicien Champsaur
• 
  Folies Bergères,
  

  Émilienne d’Alençon
• 
  Concert des Ambassadeurs,
  Champs-Élysées
• 
  Exposition Universelle 1889, Le Pays des Feés
• 
  Casino d'Enghien
• 
  L´Aureole du Midi,
  Pétrole de sureté
• 
  Recoloration des Cheveux par l'Eau des Sirènes

See also

• Les Maîtres de l'Affiche
• Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice
• Poster

References

Sources

• (in French) Maindron, Ernest (1896). Les affiches Illustrées (1886-1895), Paris: G. Boudet
• Verhagen, Marcus, The poster in Fin-de-Siècle Paris: "That Mobile and Degenerate Art", in: Charney, Leo & Vanessa R. Schwartz (eds.) (1995). Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, Berkeley (CA): University of California Press,
  ISBN 9780520201125

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jules Chéret.

• Poster Gallery
• Father of modern poster Archived 16 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
• Jules-Cheret.org Hundreds of works by Jules Chéret
• Ives, Colta Feller; Giambruni, Helen Emery; Newman, Sasha M (1989). Pierre Bonnard: the Graphic Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  ISBN 0-87099-566-9., an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF
  ), which contains material on Chéret (pp. 10, 93, 111, 146, 148, 149, 150, 203, 204, 126)
• High Res Images of Jules Chéret available for download