ONE of the great popular arts of the modern age, the poster had its heyday in France in the 1890s and early 1900s. Thanks to technical innovations in lithographic printing, advertisements for biscuits, bicycles, cabaret shows, oil lamps, perfumes, and pomades, became big, colorful pictures, eclipsing the old letterpress notices and transforming the streets of Paris into a permanent outdoor art exhibition.

Attracted by the novelty of the picture poster, and of course by the prospect of lucrative employment, artists of outstanding ability began working for the first time in the service of commerce. Their designs became the icons of the age. As even contemporary observers pointed out, business (including show business) was taking on a role in the support of art similar to that formerly played by the church.

It was a moment full of possibilities, and the genius of the moment, the artist who saw that a great poster could-and should-be a great work of modern art, was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

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