Jules Chéret
Jules Chéret (1836-1932) was a prominent French painter and poster artist, widely recognized as the "father of lithography" and the "father of the modern poster." Born into a poor family in Paris, Chéret began his career in typesetting before securing an apprenticeship with a lithographer. His artistic journey took him to London, where he started creating monochromatic posters, but it wasn't until he returned to France in 1866 that he began experimenting with vibrant colors, which would become a hallmark of his work.
Chéret's signature style often featured young, beautiful women, known as "Chérettes," depicted in lively and dynamic compositions. His innovative techniques in chromolithography not only enhanced the aesthetic appeal of posters but also established them as significant art forms, influencing the Art Nouveau movement. His entrepreneurial spirit led to the creation of "Les Maitres de l'Affiche," a project that showcased his work alongside other famous artists, making high-quality reproductions of their posters accessible to the public.
Throughout his career, Chéret produced over a thousand designs, and his contributions to poster art set the stage for future generations of artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha. Despite facing health challenges later in life, Chéret's legacy endures, with his works remaining highly sought after in the art world.
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Subject Terms
Jules Chéret
Artist
- Born: May 31, 1836
- Place of Birth: Place of birth: Paris, France
- Died: September 23, 1932
- Place of Death: Place of death: Nice, France
Significance: Jules Chéret was a French painter and poster maker. He is known as the father of the lithograph and the father of the modern poster. His work helped advance lithography, and it helped cement the importance of posters in the art world. His work helped inspire the Art Nouveau movement.
Background
Jules Chéret was born on May 31, 1836, in Paris. His father was a typesetter, and his family was poor. Chéret himself worked in typesetting from an early age. As a young man, he got an apprenticeship with a lithographer. In 1858, he created one of his earliest known posters, a work called Orphée aux Enfers. The poster was successful, but it did not garner Chéret much more work. He studied for a very short time at the École nationale de dessin.
In 1859, he moved to London, England, to work. There, he began printing posters, most of which were monochromatic. Chéret's designs were seen as somewhat modern, but they did not yet have traits characteristic to his later work, such as vibrant colors and the appearance of movement. He then became the principal illustrator for Cramer and Company, a major sheet music printer. While in London, Chéret met Eugène Rimmel, a perfume maker. Chéret began designing perfume labels for Rimmel, who helped Chéret open printing offices in England and France.
Life’s Work
Chéret moved back to France in 1866. By the time Chéret began printing in France, posters had become the main form of advertisement in the country, where the economy was expanding. At this time, he began experimenting with color in his lithographs.
His early work in France featured three colors. His work was much freer and full of movement than most of his contemporaries' work. Chéret's work, and the work of other artists at the time, was influenced by Japanese block prints. He was also influenced by French rococo art.
Chéret's work had a definite style. His posters often featured women who were young and beautiful. The women in the advertisements were often happy, and the posters conveyed movement and levity. Chéret's signature style so often included these young, beautiful women that the figures on the posters were called Chérettes. Although his posters usually included women, he did not always use live models for his work.
Chéret is best known for his use and promotion of the color lithograph. Chéret believed that chromolithography, the art of color lithography, would soon be a popular art medium. He helped develop a chromolithography style that created posters with bright colors. His use of bright colors made his work stand out, and it caught viewers’ attention. The bright colors made Chéret's advertising effective, and it helped turn his posters into sought-after pieces of art.
Chéret was an entrepreneur as well as an artist. He recognized that the public would purchase posters; therefore, he put together a project called Les Maitres de l'Affiche. The project printed posters by Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, and other famous poster artists. Most of the works that were printed in the series were small reproductions. A total of 256 works were printed between 1895 and 1900. The posters created for the series were popular in part because they were printed on high-quality paper with high-quality ink and because they were smaller than poster advertisements. These features made the prints more desirable to people who wanted to hang them in their homes.
Chéret was a prolific artist, and he created more than one thousand poster designs during his lifetime. Millions of posters were created from his lithographs. Chéret's work was so popular that people would steal the advertisements where they hung. His work continues to be popular, and his posters have sold for hundreds and even thousands of dollars.
Impact
Chéret is known as the father of lithography because he developed new techniques, making color lithography more functional and beautiful. He is also known for helping the poster become an art form of its own. By the 1880s, posters were becoming a very collectable type of art; people even took posters from where they hung on the street. Before Chéret, posters were generally dull and had very little color. Chéret's work inspired a revolution in advertising and poster making whose impact lasted well past his lifetime. Other prominent poster artists—such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha—were influenced by Chéret's prolific body of work.
Personal Life
Chéret suffered from angle-closure glaucoma and lost his sight near the end of his life. He retired to the French Rivera and died in Nice in 1932 at the age of ninety-six.
Bibliography
Collins, Bradford R. "The Poster as Art: Jules Chéret and the Struggle for Equality of the Arts in Late Nineteenth-Century France." Design History: An Anthology. Ed. Dennis P. Doordan. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Print.
Eskilson, Stephen J. Graphic Design: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Print.
"Folies-Bergère, La Loïe Fuller (Loïe Fuller at the Folies-Bergère)." MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. Web. 31 May 2016.
Gaffney, Dennis. "Jules Chéret: Elevating Ads to an Art Form." Antiques Roadshow. WGBH Educational Foundation, Jan. 2005. Web. 31 May 2016.
Herbert, Robert L. Seurat: Drawings and Paintings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Print.
"Jules Chéret." MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. Web. 31 May 2016.
"La Loïe Fuller." MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. Web. 31 May 2016.
Ravin, James G. "The Visual Difficulties of Selected Artists and Limitations of Ophthalmological Care during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (An AOS Thesis)." Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society 106 (2008): 402–425. Web. 31 May 2016.
Zmelty, Nicholas-Henri. "Art and Craft: Poster Artists and Lithographers in Paris Around 1900." Printmaking, a Cooperative Medium, vol. 207, 2022, doi.org/10.4000/estampe.2544. Accessed 30 Sept. 2024.