Jules Chéret (1836–1932) is one of the great unsung heroes of art history. He invented the modern color advertising poster, essentially created the commercial lithography industry in France, elevated the decorative arts with the energy and sophistication of a major painter, and in doing so transformed the visual environment of urban life in the late 19th century. He is the father of the poster. And yet, outside of specialist circles, his name remains less familiar than those of the artists he inspired — Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Steinlen among them.
This guide covers Chéret’s life, his technical innovations, his characteristic style, and how collectors can acquire authenticated originals from his remarkable body of work. All inventory references are drawn from La Belle Époque’s Jules Chéret collection.
Who Was Jules Chéret?
Jules Chéret was born on May 31, 1836, in Paris, the son of a typographer. He was apprenticed to a lithographer at thirteen and trained further in London, where he encountered the advanced chromolithographic techniques of English commercial printing. Returning to Paris in 1866 with support from the perfumer Eugène Rimmel, he established a printing studio on the Rue Brunel that would become the engine of the Belle Époque poster industry.
His early posters for the Folies Bergère, the Moulin Rouge (before Toulouse-Lautrec), the Palais de Glace, and countless commercial products established his visual language and his reputation. By the 1880s he was the most famous poster artist in France, and his work was collected by design enthusiasts as well as plastered on the city’s walls. In 1889 he was awarded the Légion d’Honneur — an extraordinary distinction for a commercial artist. He lived and worked until the age of ninety-six, dying in Nice in 1932.
Chéret’s Technical Innovation
Chéret’s contribution to the history of printing is as significant as his contribution to visual art. Before his innovations, color lithography was slow, expensive, and technically demanding. He developed methods of working directly on the lithographic stone in a rapid, painterly manner — using chalk, pen, and scraper with the freedom of a fine artist — that allowed him to produce complex multi-color works at commercial speed and scale.
He also mastered the technique of printing from three stones (red, yellow, blue) to achieve the full chromatic range he needed — and, crucially, he developed a method of overprinting colors in ways that created optical mixing effects, giving his work its characteristic luminosity. His posters literally glow on the wall in a way that no other lithographer of the period quite matched.
The Chérette: Chéret’s Signature Figure
Central to every Chéret composition is the figure he made his own: the Chérette. These are young women — rosy-cheeked, laughing, dancing, twirling, leaping — depicted with a sense of physical exuberance and joie de vivre that is entirely characteristic of Chéret’s worldview. They advertise products, announce performances, and invite the passerby to participate in the pleasures of modern life, all with a smile.
The art critic Roger Marx, writing in 1889, described Chéret as having done more for the emancipation of women than any number of feminist writers — the Chérettes were among the first images of genuinely happy, autonomous women to appear in mass public visual culture. They inhabit their own world, doing their own thing, radiantly unconcerned with the male gaze. This was, in 1885, genuinely radical.
Major Works and Categories
Chéret’s output is vast — over a thousand poster designs across more than forty years. His major categories include entertainment posters (for the Folies Bergère, the Opéra, the Cirque Fernando, the Palais de Glace), travel and leisure advertising, product advertising (most famously his celebrated series for Saxoleine lamp oil), and book and magazine covers.
The gallery’s Chéret holdings include several major works. His L’Hiver à Nice (1890, Imp. Chaix Paris, 44 × 64 inches) is a magnificent large-format travel poster — one of the finest travel posters of the Belle Époque. His Palais de Glace (1893, Imp. Chaix Paris) shows his consummate command of the entertainment poster format: exuberant Chérette figures, cascading confetti, and a sense of pure kinetic delight. The Paris Courses horse-racing poster (1890) and the various Maître de l’Affiche plates demonstrate the range of his subject matter and the consistent brilliance of his touch.
The Maître de l’Affiche Series
Chéret is the most extensively represented artist in the Maîtres de l’Affiche subscription series (Imprimerie Chaix, 1896–1900) — the small-format (approximately 11 × 15 inches) color lithographic reproductions of major contemporary posters issued in monthly portfolios. These plates are genuine period lithographs and represent an excellent entry point for collectors seeking authentic Chéret impressions at accessible price points. The gallery carries a selection of Chéret Maître de l’Affiche plates, including Aux Buttes Chaumont / Jouets (Plate 169, 1899) and Fête de Charité (Plate 89, 1897).
Chéret’s Legacy
Chéret’s influence on the subsequent history of graphic design cannot be overstated. He demonstrated that commercial art could achieve the sophistication and emotional resonance of fine painting. He inspired Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Steinlen directly. He established the poster as the dominant form of public visual communication for the next half-century. And he created a visual language — the exuberant female figure, the luminous color, the dynamic composition — that remains immediately legible and beautiful today.
The Late 19th Century collection at La Belle Époque provides rich context for Chéret’s work, demonstrating both his dominance of the field and the extraordinary range of artistic talent working in the Belle Époque poster tradition.
How to Know It’s an Original Chéret
Chéret’s posters are widely reproduced, though less aggressively than Mucha’s. Key authentication indicators include the lithographic grain visible under magnification (not a halftone dot pattern), the characteristic weight and texture of late 19th-century French printing paper, and — critically — the printer’s imprint. The large majority of Chéret’s major posters were printed by Imprimerie Chaix, Paris; the presence of the correct Chaix imprint in the correct format is a necessary condition of authenticity for most major works.
Elie Saporta, co-founder of La Belle Époque and former chair of the IVPDA authentication committee, has handled more Chéret originals than virtually any dealer working today. Every Chéret in our inventory has been assessed against these standards.
About the author: Elie Saporta is the co-founder of La Belle Époque Vintage Posters (est. 1985, New York) and a former chair of the IVPDA authentication committee.
Collect Jules Chéret
Chéret originals are available at every level of the market, from the Maître de l’Affiche plates (entry-level, starting at a few hundred dollars) to major large-format works in the four- to five-figure range. Browse the full Chéret collection or explore the complete gallery.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Jules Chéret important?
Chéret invented the modern color lithographic poster and essentially created the commercial poster industry in France. He elevated poster design to the level of fine art, inspired a generation of major artists (Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen), and transformed the visual environment of European cities in the Belle Époque period.
What is Jules Chéret’s style?
Chéret’s style is exuberant, luminous, and dynamic — defined by his characteristic female figures (the Chérettes), his extraordinary color sense, and his mastery of compositional movement. He is firmly Art Nouveau in his use of organic forms and his decorative sensibility, but his work has a popular energy that sets it apart from the more rarefied aestheticism of Mucha or the psychological intensity of Toulouse-Lautrec.
How many posters did Jules Chéret make?
Chéret produced over a thousand poster designs across his career, spanning more than forty years from the mid-1860s to the early 1900s. He also produced extensive decorative and book illustration work. His output is among the largest of any major figure in the history of graphic art.