Eugenie Buffet. / La Chanteuse Populaire | Maitre de L’Affiche: Plate #151

This artwork is from Les Maitres de L’Affiche series; miniature versions of outstanding stone lithograph artworks of the most important advertising posters by the finest artists.
“Eugenie Buffet was a Parisian song stylist…who was quite popular in the intimate cabaret, preferring to forsake glamour and elaborate stage effects in favor of singing about common subjects in down-to-earth ‘realistic’ style…(the artist) puts her on an ordinary Paris street in the clothes of a Paris working girl, the persona she projected in her performances”
(Gold p.118, 120)
Stevens uses a decidedly soft painterly technique for his poster for the people’s songstress, portraying her as a working girl selling one of the many popular publications on a Paris street, while being serenaded by a robust guitar player in the background.