110

Jules Chéret

1836-1932

[Les Arts]. Four decorative panels. 1891.

Condition varies, generally B+ / B: some with replaced losses, creases and restoration in margins and image; some with partially-replaced and expertly-overpainted margins. Each framed.

Unlike most of the other highly visible, big-name Art Nouveau artists, Chéret designed very few decorative panels, dedicating his art almost entirely to advertising. In fact he only designed two decorative series, comprising a total of six images: This series, designed for the Parisian wallpaper merchant Maison Pattey, The Arts, in 1891, and La Fileuse et La Dentellière for the Paris World's Fair in 1900. Maindron considered these panels to be "perfect" and suggested that the concept of "placards décoratifs" (neither prints nor posters, but a combination of both) were in fact invented by Chéret. The Arts was a series of four images representing the muses: Pantomime; Music; Dance and Comedy. In celebrating them, Chéret is also celebrating his triumph in mastering color lithography. By 1891 he was at the peak of his talent, playing freely with the composition and fully enjoying the pleasure of drawing. Adding to the unique quality of these panels is the fact that Chéret had free rein with the backgrounds, as no lettering would be added.

Contemporary critics could not restrain their enthusiasm for these new interior decorations: "One can imagine how the artist's sparkling fantasy took hold . . . and what a feast these four panels are for eyes sensitive to the pleasures of color . . . [they] form true paintings of incomparable gaiety" (La Chronique des Arts et de la Curiosité, December 12, 1891). "[They are] a frenzied poem of color, a prestigious symphony of prismatic rhythms, all the dazzle of modern enchantments, all the follies of joy and flesh in an empyrean of electric light . . . a madness of movement, a nimbleness of drawing, an abundance of life and fantasy that insinuates an exquisite vertigo of art . . . something like a late-era Midsummer Night's Dream . . . redolent of make up, artificiality, a woman's skin . . . not a dream of opium, a dream of tokay moss . . . the essential soul of Paris" (Le Courrier Francaise, December 6, 1891, no 49, p. 2).

Chéret 77-81, Broido 63, Maindron 56, Reims 307.
Each 48½x33½ inches, 123¼x85 cm. Chaix, Paris.

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