Artist: Jules Cheret French (1836-1932)
Title: Aux Buttes Chaumont
Plate: PL. 185
Original lithograph from "Les Maitres de L'Affiche" series.
Printed by Imprimerie Chaix, Paris, 1899.
Presented in 16 x 20 in. acid free, archival museum mat, with framing labels. Ready to frame. Shipped boxed flat via FedEx.
Certificate of Authenticity.
Maitre Sheet Size: 11 3/8 in x 15 3/4 in 29 cm x 40 cm
Price: $275.00
A variation of the "Aux Buttes Chaumont" poster as seen on the popular TV show "Friends" which hung in Monica and Rachel's apartment.
It is one of approximately 42 advertising posters that Cheret designed for the Paris department store "Aux Buttes Chaumont," starting around 1878.
"The composition is somewhat nonsensical in this poster for a toy and gift sale. Essentially a grouping of figures loosely connected in order to take advantage of the verticality of the poster. It's the scale and Cheret's details that are so winning here. (Such as,) The pointy-chinned clown doll being plucked from a pet goat, it's legs akimbo. The way his costume matches the polka dots of the drummer. The bucked tooth kinship of the little girls, their hairdos wild with excitement. Cheret often portrayed children in his posters, largely for such toy and gift sale announcements. Hiatt refers to this commenting that 'The joy of the little ones in possession of their playthings is contagious' (Hiatt p.34). And the mother's expression as she serenely considers a fan for herself is absolutely sublime" (Rennert, PAI-XXVII, 339)
There are three of these wonderful Aux Buttes Chaumont store posters advertising toys and gifts included in the Mâitres de l'Affiche series (see PL. 141 & PL. 169).