Best Pamono Alexandre Charpentier, Grès Émile Muller from Les Maîtres de L’Affiche, 1898

Grès Émile Muller

Year of ideation: 1897
Year: 1898
Lithograph on wove paper
Publisher: Chaix

Size: 40 x 29 cm
Signed in the plate, lower left

from the famous collection “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche”
Issue # 33, Plate #131, August 1898

Bottom left:
Les Maîtres de l’Affiche PL. 131
Imprimerie Chaix
(Encres Lorilleux & Cie.)

Bottom right, blind stamp of publisher / edition

Very Good Condition

Literature:
“The Complete Masters of the Poster”, edited by Stanley Appelbaum, Dover, New York, 1990, p. 131
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About the collection “Les Maîtres de l’Affiche”

Les Maîtres de l’Affiche (The Masters of the Poster) is one of the most prestigious and influential art publications in history. Its 256 color plates have preserved for each succeeding generation a wide-ranging selection of outstanding posters from the turn of the century, when that popular art form had reached its first peak.

The earliest printed posters were chiefly typographic, with relatively few illustrated examples. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, when all types of commercial products, including printed matter, were being aesthetically upgraded, largely thanks to various arts-and-crafts movements, serious artists such as Manet began to see new possibilities in the poster medium. It was especially Jules Chéret (1836-1932) whose unique combination of artistic, technical and entrepreneurial talents was to pave the way for a true poster industry. After Chéret opened his own print shop in Paris in 1866, his work continued to inspire numerous emulators in Europe and America. from 1881 on, his shop operated as a branch of the large Chaix firm (Imprimerie Chaix)

By the 1890s the streets of every great metropolis were enlivened by large, colourful posters.
This Chaix publication, Les Maîtres de l’Affiche, was issued as separate numbered sheets measuring 40 x 29 cm. Every month for 60 months, from December 1895 through November 1900, subscribers received a wrapper containing four consecutively numbered poster. On 16 occasions the monthly wrapper also contained a bonus plate, a specially created art lithograph. Jules Chéret, artistic director of Chaix and father of the modern poster, emerged with the lion’s share of the plates, one Chéret being included in each monthly issue of four, and seven of the 16 unnumbered bonus plates.

Of the 97 artists represented in Les Maîtres de l’Affiche, some were preeminent painters and printmakers at various stages of their careers: Toulouse-Lautrec, Denis, Bonnard, Vallotton, Puvis de Chavannes. Others were famous illustrators and cartoonists of the period, still well known to art collectors and bibliophiles. Forain, Caran d’Ache, Ibels, Willette, Boutet de Monvel, Léandre. But there were also all those whose names say “poster,” the conquering pioneers of the new medium. Chéret himself, Mucha, Steinlen, the Beggarstaffs, Grasset, Penfield, Parrish, Bradley, Hardy The list could go on and on.
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About the Artist

Alexandre-Louis-Marie Charpentier (1856–1909) was a French sculptor, medalist, craftsman, and cabinet-maker.

from working-class origins and apprenticed to an engraver as a young man, he became a studio assistant to the innovative medallist Hubert Ponscarme. Along with Ponscarme, Louis-Oscar Roty, and other artists, Charpentier advanced a resurgence of art in French medal design. Charpentier’s patrons included André Antoine, for whom he designed theatre programmes.

Charpentier experimented with a wide variety of formats and materials—tin, marble, wood, leather, and terra cotta work, the latter executed by ceramic artisan Emile Müller. He opened several cabinet shops and designed many sets of furniture. Many of his custom designs for fixtures (doorknobs, door plates, window handles and the like) were subsequently mass-produced and commercially sold.

Several of Charpentier’s works are part of the Musée d’Orsay collection.
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Important:

. The listing is for the original lithograph.
. The cover of the issue by Jules Chéret is shown for reference.