Le Grand Siècle de l’Affiche · Les Maîtres de l’Affiche
Pl 04 - Dudley Hardy
Dudley Hardy · Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, vol. 1 (Imprimerie Chaix, Paris), 1895
What it is
A colour lithograph by the British designer Dudley Hardy, issued in 1895 as Plate 4 in the first volume of Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, the miniature-poster portfolio printed by Imprimerie Chaix in Paris.
Why it matters
Les Maîtres de l'Affiche was Chaix's monthly series of reduced lithographs celebrating the poster as an art form at the height of the Belle Époque. Its core was French, but the series reached across the Channel for figures like Hardy, marking the moment British and Continental poster design were read as one movement. This plate is how a working street image entered the collector's cabinet.
What to notice
Because each plate was pulled by the same stone-lithography process as the full-size poster it shrank, the flat blocks of poster colour and hard outline hold their edge even at cabinet scale.
A wall-sized argument, printed small enough to keep.
Provenance
- School
- Belle Époque — the Affiche (France)
- Designer
- Dudley Hardy
- Printer / house
- Imprimerie Chaix, Paris
- Format
- Advertising poster
- Poster published
- Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, vol. 1 (Imprimerie Chaix, Paris), 1895
- Source
- Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica)
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. 95-year rule (published 1930 or earlier). Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 27x41" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
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