JULES CHÉRET (1836-1932) LA CIGALE MADRILÈNE. 1889. 28 3/4x21 3/4 inches. Chaix, Paris. Condition A-: vertical and horizontal folds; minor ink stain in bottom right corner. Jules Chéret is universally acknowledged as the father of the poster. He created his first poster in 1858, for Orphée aux Enfers an operetta, and went on to design more than 1000 images over the course of his career. In the 1880s, Chéret made some tremendous, even revolutionary, innovations in the art of color lithography, but for the first 30 years of his career his posters were essentially red, against a gradated green-blue background. Broido 21, Maindron 19, Chéret 28.
