Bal au Moulin Rouge
Jules Chéret’s poster for the opening of the Moulin Rouge in 1889 – colour lithography that turned the street into a gallery.
Jules Chéret developed a method of printing large posters in colour with only three or four stones. His posters for theatres, department stores and places of entertainment filled the streets of Paris from the 1870s.
For the Moulin Rouge, which opened in 1889, he made a poster with the mill and dancing women. Two years later Toulouse-Lautrec made his famous poster for the same venue.
Materials: Colour lithograph on paper
Manufacture: Printed from several lithographic stones, one for each colour, at the Imprimerie Chaix in Paris.
Strong, transparent colours in few printings: red, yellow and blue.
Cheerful, floating female figures, the so-called Chérettes.
The printer’s name and Chéret’s signature at the edge of the image.