Some Images of Women in French Posters of the 1890s

Abstract

The image of woman was an important one for painters of Romanticism and indeed it dominated much artistic endeavor during the whole nineteenth century. It is therefore not surprising that women became the major subject matter for the posters which were created in France in the 1880s and 1890s at the height of the international poster movement.The final decades of the century in many ways occupy a place apart from the earlier years. To the student of Symbolist literature this is the fin-de-siecle; to the sociologist and historian la belle epoque; and for the art historian the period marks the emergence of a new style l'Art Nouveau—which attempted to break away from traditional art forms.Numerous French Art Nouveau posters, by virtue of their near-abstract qualities, were important forerunners of nonrepresentational twentieth-century painting. Other poster artists, however, followed academic and social-realist practices with a good deal of photographic veracity and their works have not received much attenti...