Before the Beggarstaff Brothers initiated the reform movement in British poster art—the early phase of which, despite the effective colour sense of Walter Crane, passed away all too soon with the death of Aubrey Beardsley—ChÉret, Steinlen, and Mucha were already at work in France, the first and eldest of these masters being practically the creator of the modern poster in its more individual characteristics. A good deal of the Victorian heaviness was still with us in the eighteen-nineties: we liked good solid meals; our theatres offered us feasts of ponderous sentimentality; and so the British merchant and advertising agent, employing a poster artist, bade him tell us of the things we liked best—sauces, soaps, melodramas, tea, and stout. For still the idea was prevalent that the successful advertiser appealed to his public most when he told them about something they already knew and liked: a sweet domestic scene to linger in the memory after dinner and remind them of Tompkins’ pills; or a pleasant landscape executed with a kaleidoscopic richness of colour to persuade one to buy Fishville Sauce. There were, of course, many striking exceptions to this; but it was generally true enough to justify the American observer’s criticism that British posters mostly depicted things to eat, or soap.

But France, being by temperament, by environment, and by tradition a far more artistic nation, with a much higher standard of general taste, responded more readily to the lighter and more fascinating touch of those artists who chose the street and the theatre entrance as their gallery. It is more than fifty years since ChÉret started on his flamboyant comet-like career, setting Paris aflame (so to speak) with joyously wild, irresponsible visions of colour and line, delicate and fantastic. Steinlen, Mucha, Grasset, Toulouse-Lautrec, Willette, Bonnard, Guillaume, and others worked with him in more recent days, and among these are artists who have done masterly posters for France during the War.

It is still with the greatest reluctance that a drawing, even when it conveys a definite suggestion clearly, is accepted in England unless it is “finished”: the value of a work of art is reckoned in accordance with the amount of patient craftsmanship which it displays. The French poster artist, on the contrary—and he obviously has the public as his supporter, or his vogue would cease—is often content to throw upon the space at his command what, on this side of the Channel, any advertising agent would scoff at and reject as a “mere sketch.” If the French artist can convey his suggestion, his idea, in a few hasty lines or brilliant touches of colour, he knows that his work is done, and is well content.

Looking at the French war posters as a whole, one feels that in no other country has there been the same poignant appeal, the same presence of a deeply-felt emotion. And these have been transferred to the posters with a spontaneity, a lightness, and an expressive sufficiency that make the French poster stand alone. Take the posters of Steinlen, Faivre, Willette, Poulbot, and that versatile master, Roll, whose death occurred while these notes were being prepared. They each have the brilliant quality of a sketch by a man who is master of his material. They are drawn with the fine, free gesture of the born narrator. All the balance and compactness of the French conte are there, with every line inducing to intensity of expression. In the figures there is nothing of English photographic precision, nothing of Germany’s force and brutality, but always a note of intense sympathy, of something subtly human. Rapid, slight, they may be; but there is a greatness and endurance in their design and their appeal. The poilu, in the trenches or en permission, the gamin of the streets, the worker in the field or hospital, the invalid who has been smitten by the heavy blows of war, are alive in these swift chalk-drawn studies.

The whole difference between the British and the French outlook is summed up in Jules Abel Faivre’s poster for the JournÉe Nationale des Tuberculeux, with the poignant appeal of the figure in its luminous envelopment of sea and sky. There is no need for any vandal to write his descriptive note across the face of this to drive its message home. The sad tale is told at a glance; and its brief legend—“Sauvons-les” (Let us save them)—is not necessary to make the meaning clear, but rather it delivers an additional message—a note of resolution and purpose—to the awakened sympathy when the picture has done its work. Here everything necessary is said: not a superfluous touch to mar its purpose, nor a touch too little. Yet an English advertiser would never have been content with those two comforting hands which pathetically suggest so much. The suggestion to him would have been totally inadequate, and he would have insisted on a full-length nurse in uniform, or a hospital ward, and medicine bottles, and all sorts of needless detail.

In the earliest months of the War France was perhaps too heavily shocked by the onslaught, and too busily engaged in material organisation, to give much attention to the subject of posters. But for the JournÉe du Poilu at Christmas-time, 1915 Steinlen, Faivre, Neumon, Poulbot, and Willette contributed designs which immediately set upon French war posters the stamp of genuine understanding of the purpose in view and appreciation of the material at disposal. So, through a long series of War Loan posters, “Flag-day” appeals, and posters relating to every phase of life where advertisement could be a valuable thing till the welcome end was reached, French artists produced an incomparable variety of brilliant designs, in which gaiety, pathos, humour, and tragedy were touched with a characteristic lightness of hand, and often touched with true greatness of conception.

Among those who have done the most distinguished work the artists named above have contributed a large proportion. Jules Abel Faivre, whose “Sauvons-les” has already been referred to at length, has perhaps earned more individual fame by his designs than any other French poster artist during the War. Several of his lithographs approach greatness, and two—the “Sauvons-les” and “On les aura!” both of which are illustrated in this book—can be said confidently to attain it. In its way nothing could be better also than Poulbot’s sketch of children collecting for the JournÉe du Poilu—“Pour que papa vienne en permission, s’il vous plaÎt.” This artist has done several other very excellent posters, showing an intense understanding and appreciation of child life. The humour of Willette, exemplified in the delightful “Enfin seuls...!”, reproduced here as illustration No. 31, and the dramatic sense of Charles Fouqueray, find ample material for expression, and in their hands it is finely used. Roll, the more complete artist, versatile and subtle in his work, master of many styles, proved that he, too, could design an appealing poster, as the fifth plate in this book testifies.

The poster artists of France were not to the same degree overshadowed by one great executant as were those of England by Brangwyn. But for all that, a figure stands out before the rest, both by his power as a craftsman and the weight and strength of his individual characteristics. ThÉophile Alexandre Steinlen was at work upon posters twenty-five years ago, and even then he ranked among the first three or four leaders of this branch of art. Like Brangwyn in England, he is a master of the medium he uses—a great lithographer, whose consummate sense of draughtsmanship and design serves him in the expression of noble thought and in portraying the emotions of a profound, large-hearted patriot.

Mention must also be made of the posters by the distinguished Alsatian artist Hansi—a keen patriot, who was willing to spend himself generously in the service of an Alsace longing for freedom from the yoke of Germany. The German Government offered a reward for information that should lead to his arrest, and issued proclamations to that effect, ostensibly on the plea that he had evaded service in their army, but actually because of the pen and brush that in his hands were powerful weapons which they could not afford to despise. His posters depict the fraternisation of French soldiers with the people of Alsace, and one of them the raising of the victorious tricolour once more over the Cathedral of Strasbourg. All honour to the artist, who, in the face of danger, and a fugitive from death, remained the supporter of a cause still far off from victory—a patriot whose work was full of courage and hope for an oppressed people.