POSTERS

Antique and Vintage Posters and Advertising Prints

This category brings together original antique and vintage posters and advertising prints from the great era of commercial poster art, spanning the period from the development of colour lithography as a medium for large-format printed imagery in the 1860s through to the inter-war period of the early 20th century. These works represent the application of the finest graphic design talent of the Belle Epoque and subsequent eras to the challenge of commercial communication, producing images that combined artistic ambition with commercial purpose to create some of the most visually striking printed works of their time.

The development of the modern poster as an art form is inseparable from the work of Jules Cheret, whose exuberant colour lithographs for Parisian entertainments from the 1860s onwards established the visual language that defined the genre. Cheret’s innovation — the use of colour lithography at large scale to create vivid, attention-commanding images for public display — inspired a generation of artists who elevated the advertising poster to the level of fine art. Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Theophile Steinlen, Eugene Grasset and their contemporaries produced posters of extraordinary artistic quality that transcended their commercial function to become objects of lasting aesthetic significance.

Travel posters form one of the major subcategories of vintage poster collecting, with the railways, shipping lines and tourist boards of Britain, Europe, Australia and the wider world commissioning artists to produce images of destinations that combined accurate information with the most seductive visual presentation available. These travel posters — depicting the beaches, mountains, cities and scenic attractions of destinations from the English Riviera to the Australian outback — are among the most decoratively appealing and widely collected vintage printed objects in the market.

Entertainment posters — for theatres, music halls, circuses, exhibitions and the early cinema — document the popular culture of the Belle Epoque and subsequent decades with a visual directness and graphic energy that makes them among the most compelling historical documents of their era. Advertising prints for commercial products — from food and beverages to household goods and luxury items — complete the range of this category, offering collectors access to the full commercial and artistic output of the great age of print advertising.

Original antique and vintage posters are collected for their extraordinary visual quality, their historical importance as primary documents of commercial art history, and their continued decorative appeal as wall objects of exceptional graphic power.