Original Maitres De L'Affiche - Pl 20 Harper's March Rabbit

This is an original colour lithographic plate from Les Maîtres de l'Affiche — one of the most celebrated art publications of the Belle Époque, and today one of the most collected series of printed works from the late 19th century. Conceived and directed by Jules Chéret, the father of the modern poster, and produced at the Imprimerie Chaix in Paris between 1895 and 1900, the series reproduced 256 of the most outstanding advertising posters of the era in a refined small format, issued in sets of four and delivered monthly to subscribers. In its time, it was a subscription art collection; today, each plate is a rare and sought-after document of the golden age of French lithographic poster art.

Plate 20 reproduces the celebrated March 1895 cover of Harper's Magazine by Edward Penfield (1866–1925) — the American illustrator who served as staff illustrator, art editor and art director at Harper's from 1890 to 1901, and who is widely regarded as the father of the American poster. His style, deceptively simple yet of great elegance, owes much to the influence of Japanese woodblock prints and the flat chromatic planes of the French affichistes — and this image is a perfect example of his art at its most assured. A blustery March wind sends a copy of the magazine flying from a woman's hands, while a startled hare looks on in surprise: the whole scene captured in a handful of colours, with the economy of line that only a master draughtsman can achieve.

Penfield's Harper's covers were the American counterpart to the great French Belle Époque posters — and their inclusion in Les Maîtres de l'Affiche by Chéret was an act of transatlantic recognition: an acknowledgement that the art of the poster had, by 1895, become a truly international phenomenon. This plate, on heavyweight paper and in excellent condition, is a pristine example from the original print run.

This example is in excellent condition — grade A — and is presented unframed, ready for the wall it deserves.

A Belle Époque collector's piece — Penfield's most playful image, in the series that made poster art collectable on both sides of the Atlantic.