Jules Chéret

Jules Chéret ( born May 31, 1836 in Paris, † September 23, 1932 in Nice ) was a French lithographer, painter and graphic artist. His name is the beginnings of the modern poster image are connected.

Life

Chéret was the son of a printer. The family lived under financially constrained circumstances that Jules had to leave school at age 13 and was given three years to a lithographer in the teaching. His interest in the visual arts led him to attend a drawing class at Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran at the " Ecole Nationale de Dessin " in Paris - the only artistic training he ever received. As a painter he was self-taught, he frequently visited the museums of Paris, where he was impressed especially the French Rococo painters such as Antoine Watteau and Jean- Honoré Fragonard.

After completing his apprenticeship Chéret was able to sell some designs at Parisian music publisher, but saw in his home no further development opportunities. In 1854 he traveled to London, made ​​some drawings for the " Maple Furniture Company ", but came back very soon disappointed, though not discouraged to Paris. In 1858, he finally received his first prominent poster contract - for the announcement of the opera " Orpheus in the Underworld " by Jacques Offenbach. Since further significant orders failed, drove Chéret in 1859 again to London. During his stay several years he studied the English advanced technique of color lithograph, signed book covers for the " Cramer " Publishing and designed posters for different places of amusement and for product advertising. For the perfume manufacturers Eugène Rimmel, with whom he had a mutual friend made ​​known, he designed the sets of boxes and bottles. Rimmel allowed him to return in 1866 to Paris, there to open his own lithographic establishment.

With this step, Chéret began actual career. Condition were the technical innovations that he himself had developed or imported. In England at that time were already large posters - up to 193 x 144 cm - printed, making the necessary printing presses could bring Chéret to Paris. He also simplified the actual printing process. Until this point in color lithographs of up to 25 stones printed, so he reduced this number then see five, 1869 then down to three stones - usually one for black, one for red and one third with the so-called "fond gradué ", a graded background, which thus came about that two colors were printed from the same stone. The simplified method was significantly more cost effective. But it also brought a new style of presentation with it. The rather picturesque appearance of the previous multi-color prints was replaced by increasingly extensive and stylized representations - the first step to the poster of modernity. The relatively simple method also allowed artists without any special technical knowledge to use the new possibilities. Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, Théophile -Alexandre Steinlen, Eugène Grasset, and others created posters, whose artistic quality was evaluated by connoisseurs higher than the pioneering Chéret.

With increasing public success Chéret retired in 1881 back from the management of his print " Imprimerie Chaix " and retained only the artistic direction of the company. Between 1896 and 1900 he published the collection " Les Maitres de l' Affiche", a collection of the best posters of Parisian artists in reduced reproductions; success encouraged other entrepreneurs to imitations. At the World Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889 Chéret won for his work one gold and one silver medal. 1890, 1900, 1910 and 1926, he was awarded various ranks of the French Legion of Honour. At the age he lived on because of the mild climate and more frequently on the French Riviera. In 1925, he lost his eyesight, but was still often seen as a walker in the streets of Nice. He died in 1932 at the age of 96 years and was interred in the Cimetière Saint -Vincent in Montmartre in Paris. The following year, a retrospective of his work at the prestigious Parisian " Salon d' Automne " ( "Autumn Salon" ) was shown.

Work

Chéret himself was the first who made ​​extensive use of the new possibilities of printing technology. In the course of some 40 years, he created approximately 1200 posters for a variety of clients: for opera and ballet, concert cafes, pantomime, touring theater, ballrooms, a skating rink, the waxwork museum, Musée Grevin, festivals, bookstores, newspapers and magazines, Parisian stores, drinks and alcoholic beverages, pharmaceutical products, perfumes and cosmetics, heating and lighting, machinery, railways, petroleum, the Paris racecourse. His work consisted almost always of a central female figure - a young, attractive, relatively scantily clad woman for that time - and a cleverly integrated, advertising text. Figures, compositions and colors were repeated in slight variations in many cases.

These posters were the French public enthusiastic reception. The mapped type of cheerful, elegant, self-confident young woman was acting under the name " Chérette " a fixture in the Parisian cityscape. The effect of his posters had quite calculated Chéret. He found that the modern poster artist " his psychologist and must have made familiar with the logic and optical laws of his art. He must invent something that stops the average person and even encourages, the image of the road when he can pass rush to his eyes from the pavement or trolley. . Plus, I believe, is nothing so very suitable as a simple, lovely and yet thrilling picture in vibrant and yet harmonious colors " in the French daily newspaper" Le Figaro " was to read: " Chéret's figures are cheeky and frivolous. In elegant pose they float on Rococo clouds. He is the steam Watteau our day. "

The posters was to come through the Chéret to glory and prosperity were. Since the 1890s, however, arose frequently also images that were not intended as an advertising media. A series of illustrations was intended for the decoration of interiors, had the tables titles such as " La Pantomime " (1891 ), " La Musique " (1891 ), " La Danse " (1891 ), " La Comedie " (1891 ), " La Fileuse " ( 1900) and " La Dentelliere " ( 1900). Chéret also painted delicate, pleasing oil paintings and pastels, women remained the predominant motif. Such work he exhibited for the first time from 1912, received spontaneous recognition of his skills as a visual artist and then worked almost exclusively in this area. As a commissioned work he led, among other murals in private homes and theaters, but also in the prefecture of Nice. Chéret was friends with important artists of his time, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Auguste Rodin, Theophile Steinlen and Jacques Villon.

" Cacao Lhara ", 1890

" Quinquina Dubonnet ', 1895

" Arlette Dorgere "

" Pastilles Geraudel ", 1890

" Masquerade", circa 1900

" La Musique ", 1891

" La Danse ', 1891