Page:Picture Posters.djvu/134

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114
PICURE POSTERS.

towards a crowd of grinning pigmies beneath him. Every one of the crowd is extremely expressive, and the effect of the whole production is enhanced by very excellent lettering. It would be difficult to meet with two affiches more interesting than the "Marguerite Dufay" and "Le Rire," and they place Anquetin amongst the masters of the art of the poster.

If Anquetin is an artist of marked originality, so, in a manner totally different, is Pierre Bonnard. Save in the small number of his posters, he resembles Anquetin in hardly anything; on the other hand, his work has points of similarity with the later work of Lautrec. The posters of both these artists are decorative in a curious and somewhat similar sort of way, decorative in spite of their marked grotesqueness. Between the "Confetti" of Lautrec and the "Revue Blanche" of Bonnard there is a distinct decorative affinity. As both of them are dated the same year, 1894, it is needless to suggest that either of these intensely personal artists has derived anything from the other; there is, indeed, no evidence whatsoever of imitation, or even influence. Of the two best-known posters of Bonnard, the "France Champagne" is the earlier in point of time, having been published in 1891. It is a lithograph in three colours, and represents an extraordinarily fantastic, and extremely décolletée girl, who holds in one hand a