Émile Berchmans, Association pour l'Encouragement des Beaux-Arts from Les Maîtres de L'Affiche, 1898, Original Lithograph

Émile Berchmans (1867-1947)

Association pour l'Encouragement des Beaux-Arts

Year: 1898
Lithograph on wove paper
Publisher: Chaix

Signed in the plate, lower left
Size: 29 x 40 cm

from the famous collection "Les Maîtres de l'Affiche"
Issue # 27, Plate #108, February 1898

Bottom left:
Les Maîtres de l'Affiche PL. 108
Imprimerie Chaix
(Encres Lorilleux & Cie.)

Bottom right, blind stamp of publisher / edition

Excellent Condition

Literature:
"The Complete Masters of the Poster", edited by Stanley Appelbaum, Dover, New York, 1990, p. 108
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About the collection "Les Maîtres de l'Affiche"

Les Maîtres de l'Affiche (The Masters of the Poster) is one of the most prestigious and influential art publications in history Its 256 color plates have preserved for each succeeding generation a wide-ranging selection of outstanding posters from the turn of the century, when that popular art form had reached its first peak.

The earliest printed posters were chiefly typographic, with relatively few illustrated examples. But in the second half of the nineteenth century, when all types of commercial products, including printed matter, were being aesthetically upgraded, largely thanks to various arts-and-crafts movements, serious artists such as Manet began to see new possibilities in the poster medium. It was especially Jules Chéret (1836-1932) whose unique combination of artistic, technical and entrepreneurial talents was to pave the way for a true poster industry. After Chéret opened his own print shop in Paris in 1866, his work continued to inspire numerous emulators in Europe and America. from 1881 on, his shop operated as a branch of the large Chaix firm (Imprimerie Chaix)

By the 1890s the streets of every great metropolis were enlivened by large, colourful posters.
This Chaix publication, Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, was issued as separate numbered sheets measuring 40 x 29 cm. Every month for 60 months, from December 1895 through November 1900, subscribers received a wrapper containing four consecutively numbered poster. On 16 occasions the monthly wrapper also contained a bonus plate, a specially created art lithograph. Jules Chéret, artistic director of Chaix and father of the modern poster, emerged with the lion's share of the plates, one Chéret being included in each monthly issue of four, and seven of the 16 unnumbered bonus plates.

Of the 97 artists represented in Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, some were preeminent painters and printmakers at various stages of their careers: Toulouse-Lautrec, Denis, Bonnard, Vallotton, Puvis de Chavannes. Others were famous illustrators and cartoonists of the period, still well known to art collectors and bibliophiles. Forain, Caran d'Ache, Ibels, Willette, Boutet de Monvel, Léandre. But there were also all those whose names say "poster," the conquering pioneers of the new medium. Chéret himself, Mucha, Steinlen, the Beggarstaffs, Grasset, Penfield, Parrish, Bradley, Hardy The list could go on and on.
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About the Artist

Émile Berchmans (1867 – 1947) was a Belgian painter and illustrator.

He was the son of the painter Émile-Édouard Berchmans, brother of the sculptor Oscar Berchmans.
Educated in his father's studio and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Liège, where he studied with Adrien de Witte, Émile Berchmans spent most of his career in Liège. Along with Armand Rassenfosse and Auguste Donnay, he was one of the leading poster designers at the August Bernard printing house in Liège. The collaboration between the three Belgian artists and the French typographer was the basis of avant-garde graphic production in poster art in Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

In 1904, Émile Berchmans was appointed professor of theoretical composition and sketching at the Academy of Fine Arts in Liège and became professor to Régine Renchon, Georges Simenon's first wife. He took up the post of professor of painting and decorative arts in 1922 and served as director of the Academy from 1930 to 1934.
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Important:

. The listing is for the original lithograph.
. The cover of the issue by Jules Chéret is shown for reference.