Jules Cheret

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Jules Chéret, around 1890
"Orpheus in the Underworld", 1858
"Jardin de Paris", 1897

Jules Chéret (born May 31, 1836 in Paris , † September 23, 1932 in Nice ) was a French lithographer , printmaker and painter . The beginnings of the modern picture poster are connected with his name .

Life

Chéret was the son of a printer. The family lived under financially constrained circumstances, Jules had to leave school at the age of 13 and was apprenticed to a lithographer for three years. His interest in the fine arts led him to attend a drawing course with Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran at the “École Nationale de Dessin” in Paris - the only artistic training he ever received. As a painter he was self-taught , he often visited the Paris museums, where he was particularly impressed by the French rococo painters such as Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard .

After completing his apprenticeship, Chéret was able to sell some designs to Parisian music publishers, but saw no further development opportunities in his home country. In 1854 he traveled to London, also made some drawings for the “Maple Furniture Company”, but soon returned to Paris disappointed, if not discouraged. In 1858 he finally received his first prominent poster commission - for the announcement of the opera “ Orpheus in der Unterwelt ” by Jacques Offenbach . Since there were no further noteworthy orders, Chéret went to London again in 1859. During his stay for several years, he studied the advanced English technique of color lithography, drew book covers for the “Cramer” publishing house and designed posters for various amusement facilities and for product advertising. For the perfume manufacturer Eugène Rimmel , with whom a mutual friend introduced him, he designed the equipment for cardboard boxes and flacons . Rimmel made it possible for him to return to Paris in 1866 to open his own lithography institute there.

With this step, Cheret's real career began. The prerequisite were the technical innovations that he had imported or developed himself. Large-format posters - up to 193 × 144 cm - were already being printed in England at that time, and Chéret had the necessary printing presses brought to Paris. In addition, it simplified the actual printing process. Until then, color lithographs of up to 25 stones were printed, so he reduced this number to five, then in 1869 to three stones - mostly one for black, one for red and a third with the so-called “fond gradué”, a graduated one Background that was created by printing two colors from the same stone. The simplified procedure was significantly cheaper. But it also brought a new style of representation with it. The rather painterly appearance of the earlier multi-color prints was replaced by more flat and stylized depictions - the first step towards the poster of modernism. The relatively simple process also allowed artists without 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 rated higher by connoisseurs than Chéret's pioneering work.

With increasing public success, Chéret withdrew from the management of his printing company "Imprimerie Chaix" in 1881 and only retained the artistic direction of the company. Between 1896 and 1900 he published the “Les Maitres de l'Affiche” collection, a collection of the best posters by Parisian artists in scaled-down reproductions ; the success prompted other entrepreneurs to emulate. At the World's Fair of 1878 and the World's Fair of 1889 , Chéret won gold and silver medals for his work. In 1890, 1900, 1910 and 1926 he was awarded various ranks by the French Legion of Honor. In his old age he stayed more and more often on the French Riviera because of the mild climate . In 1925 he lost his eyesight, but was still often seen walking the streets of Nice. He died in 1932 at the age of 96 and was buried in the Cimetière Saint-Vincent on Montmartre in Paris . The following year, a retrospective of his work was shown at the prestigious Parisian “ Salon d'Automne ” (“Autumn Salon”).

plant

Chéret himself was the first to make intensive use of the new possibilities of his printing technology. Over the course of around 40 years, he created almost 1,200 posters for a wide variety of clients: for opera and ballet, concert cafés, pantomimes , touring theaters, ballrooms, an ice rink, the Musée Grévin wax museum , festivals, bookstores, newspapers and magazines, Parisian shops, Drinks and alcohol, pharmaceutical products , perfumes and cosmetics, heating and lighting, machines and apparatus, railroad lines, petroleum , the Paris racecourse . His works almost always consisted of a central female figure - a young, attractive woman who was relatively lightly clad for the time - and a cleverly integrated advertising text. Figures, compositions and colors were repeated many times in slight modifications.

These posters were enthusiastically received by the French public. The depicted type of cheerful, elegant, self-confident young woman became a fixture in the Parisian cityscape under the name “Chérette”. Chéret had calculated the effect of his posters. He found that the modern poster designer “must be a psychologist and familiarize himself with the logical and optical laws of his art. He has to invent something that stops and stimulates even the average person when he lets the image of the street rush past his eyes from the pavement or the car. And for that, I believe, nothing is more suitable than a simple, lovely and yet gripping picture in lively yet harmonious colors. ” The French daily“ Le Figaro ”read: “ Chéret's figures are cheeky and frivolous. In an elegant pose, they float on Rococo clouds. He is the steam Watteau of our day. "

It was the posters that gave Chéret her fame and fortune. Since the 1890s, however, there have also been more pictures that were not intended as advertising media. A number of picture panels were intended to decorate interiors, the panels had 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. He exhibited such works for the first time in 1912, received spontaneous recognition for his skills as a visual artist and then worked almost exclusively in this field. His commissioned work included murals in private houses 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 .

literature

  • Lucy Brodio (Ed.): The posters of Jules Chéret . Dover, New York 1980, ISBN 0-486-24010-X .
  • Ségolène le Men: Jules Chéret. Le cirque & l'art forain . Somogy, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-85056-557-1 .
  • Camille Mauclair : Jules Chéret . Garrec, Paris 1930.
  • Michael Buhrs (Ed.): Jules Chéret. Poster art pioneer. Pioneer Of Poster Art. Villa Stuck, Arnoldsche Art Publishers, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-89790-356-2 .

Web links

Commons : Jules Chéret  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ [1] Text by the German Historical Museum on early posters
  2. ^ [2] Text by the German Historical Museum on early posters