The Complete "Masters of the Poster": All 256 Color Plates from "Les Maîtres de l'Affiche" (Dover Fine Art, History of Art)

Just the thought of a poster subscription series makes me wonder why no one does this today. At the turn of the previous century, with Art Nouveau in full bloom, Victorian still prominent, and Art Deco hinted as the future, posters blossomed. They were most decidedly worth receiving in the mail – four a month, for a full series of 240. Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Grasset and countless others, made their living in advertising.And here they are, in order, numbered, with stats about the artists, and an overview. The artists were breaking out of the stifling Victorian mould. They were no longer restricted to geometric frameworks. Their subjects could be facing away, playing with the text, woven into the title, or have nothing whatever to do with the product being advertised. The artists made up new fonts like there was no tomorrow. For centuries, there had been only a handful of fonts outside the decorous initial letters of religious text chapters. Here, now, for all to see, was open competition to attract the eye of the passer-by. And in as ultra-modern a fashion as possible.It was an exuberant era, beautifully assembled in this Dover collection for all to see in outsized pages.David Wineberg

This is a beautiful book, with gorgeous copies of all 256 Le Maitres de l'affiche posters. If you're a fan of the Belle Epoque and art Nouveau posters, you'll love flipping through this comprehensive collection!

This product is exactly as represented - a complete collection of the series in full color. Each poster had it's own full page and was well reproduced. I consider this a perfect reference resource for anyone interested in this series or classic poster art in general. Note, however, that as another reviewer stated, this item is pretty much just the collected posters....there is no real textual history about the works. Considering this product represents what was already a collected homage made 115 years or so ago anyway that is to be expected. Note that many of the wonderful smaller stone lithographs made for the original Chaix series are still quite readily available. I recently saw that Martin Lawrence galleries had some in their collection. While these items can often range anywhere from $1000 to $6000 individually, when galleries have their seasonal auctions, many of these plates can be had for as little as $500.

It's in great shape, thanks!

Wonderful large format book with glossy images of each of the gorgeous posters in the "Les Maîtres de l'Affiche" series. Beautiful to look at, and, for collectors, a great reference.

This book is really nice. Each image is full page and the image quality is very good. Excellent book for not a lot of money.

Everything is great with this book EXCEPTThe transfer of the plate numbers and the actual artist has been extremely poorly done. Someone needs to go back in and assure that a Chéret poster is credited to Chéret and that Steinlen is credited to Steinlen. If one had no other references one would quite go mad with the mis-numbering/crediting of the plates.

Excellent, complete book

Just the thought of a poster subscription series makes me wonder why no one does this today. At the turn of the previous century, with Art Nouveau in full bloom, Victorian still prominent, and Art Deco hinted as the future, posters blossomed. They were most decidedly worth receiving in the mail – four a month, for a full series of 240. Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Grasset and countless others, made their living in advertising.And here they are, in order, numbered, with stats about the artists, and an overview. The artists were breaking out of the stifling Victorian mould. They were no longer restricted to geometric frameworks. Their subjects could be facing away, playing with the text, woven into the title, or have nothing whatever to do with the product being advertised. The artists made up new fonts like there was no tomorrow. For centuries, there had been only a handful of fonts outside the decorous initial letters of religious text chapters. Here, now, for all to see, was open competition to attract the eye of the passer-by. And in as ultra-modern a fashion as possible.It was an exuberant era, beautifully assembled in this Dover collection for all to see in outsized pages.David Wineberg

Meraviglioso volume grande bello illustrato dall'inizio alla fine con tavole a colori riproducenti fedelmente i manifesti della belle epoque eseguiti dai piú importanti affichistes di tutto il mondo. Se siete amanti dell'art nouveau e pittorica di inizio novecento acquistatelo subito perché il prezzo é destinato a salire, io infatti l'ho pagato 5 euro in meno.

Just the thought of a poster subscription series makes me wonder why no one does this today. At the turn of the previous century, with Art Nouveau in full bloom, Victorian still prominent, and Art Deco hinted as the future, posters blossomed. They were most decidedly worth receiving in the mail – four a month, for a full series of 240. Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Grasset and countless others, made their living in advertising.And here they are, in order, numbered, with stats about the artists, and an overview. The artists were breaking out of the stifling Victorian mould. They were no longer restricted to geometric frameworks. Their subjects could be facing away, playing with the text, woven into the title, or have nothing whatever to do with the product being advertised. The artists made up new fonts like there was no tomorrow. For centuries, there had been only a handful of fonts outside the decorous initial letters of religious text chapters. Here, now, for all to see, was open competition to attract the eye of the passer-by. And in as ultra-modern a fashion as possible.It was an exuberant era, beautifully assembled in this Dover collection for all to see in outsized pages.David Wineberg