Le Grand Siècle de l’Affiche · Les Maîtres de l’Affiche
Pl 16 - Beggarstaff
Beggarstaffs (James Pryde and William Nicholson) · Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, vol. 1 (Imprimerie Chaix, Paris), 1895
What it is
A colour lithograph after the Beggarstaffs — the pseudonym of brothers-in-law James Pryde and William Nicholson — issued in 1895 as Plate 16 of Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, volume one, and printed by Imprimerie Chaix in Paris.
Why it matters
The Chaix portfolio put these British designers in front of the Paris audience that had made the poster an art form, and the Beggarstaffs answered with a method all their own: they built images by cutting and pinning sheets of coloured paper, then reducing them to lithography. That process forced flat blocks of tone and hard silhouettes with no modelling, an economy of means that would set the direction for a century of advertising design.
What to notice
Look at how the picture holds together as blocks of flat colour with no shading at all — the printed trace of images first cut and pinned from coloured paper.
Say it in shapes, or don't say it at all.
Provenance
- School
- Belle Époque — the Affiche (France)
- Designer
- Beggarstaffs (James Pryde and William Nicholson)
- 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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