?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
ERNEST MAINDRON (1838-1907)
LES AFFICHES ILLUSTRÉES. Two bound volumes. 1886 & 1896.
Each approximately 12½x9½ inches, 31¾x24 cm. Chaix, Paris. Condition varies, generally B+: some minor separation of inside pages. Folio, contemporary 1/2 morocco, gilt spine ends, original wrappers bound into each. Bookplate in vol. I.
These two volumes are the indispensable source material for anyone interested in posters and poster collecting in fin-de-siecle France. Maindron was not only the first serious collector of posters, the first to organize a poster exhibition, the first to publish a book about posters, but he also held the very prominent position of Secretary of the Academy of Science. The first volume incorporates the history of posters through 1886. The second volume, written almost ten years later, captures the intervening years and records the zenith of French poster design, including a complete catalogue of the works of Jules Chéret. They are richly illustrated in both black-and-white and color (the color lithography was printed by Chaix, under the supervision of Jules Chéret, the director of the firm) and are an unequaled, early source of information about posters. These are numbered 253 (of 525), and 838 (of 1025). The first volume includes 20 chromolithograph Chéret images reproduced by Chaix; Volume II is illustrated with 64 color lithograph plates and 102 plates in black and white and color, reproducing works by Jules Chéret, Toulouse-Lautrec, Mucha, Pal, Steinlen and others.
