Vintage Poster Archives
Alhambra Jambons 1925 | Henri Le Monnier Food Poster
Alhambra Jambons 1925 | Henri Le Monnier Food Poster
Couldn't load pickup availability
A yellow-clad chef rides a galloping pig across a navy ground, one hand raised with a silver platter of ham and sausage, the other cradling a tower of Alhambra preserve tins. The pig is painted in warm salmon pink; the chef in unbroken cadmium yellow from toque to breeches. Bold lime-green outlined display type names the products below: Jambons. Saucissons. Salaisons. Conserves.
Designed by Henri Le Monnier in 1925 for the Alhambra Abattoirs Industriels de Chasseneuil, a charcuterie and canning company in the Vienne department of western France. Le Monnier (1893–1978) worked chiefly for the Paris printer Affiches Lutetia through the 1920s and 1930s, producing commercial poster work in a register close to Leonetto Cappiello: saturated single-colour figures isolated against dark grounds, compositions built for legibility on the street. The Alhambra poster, signed and dated 1925 lower right, is one of the most assured works in his surviving catalogue.
The dark navy ground, a device Cappiello had established as a signature of French advertising lithography, throws the yellow and pink figures into high relief, giving the composition the snap of a stage backdrop at the moment the curtain rises. The pig as both subject and vehicle is a piece of visual wit with deep roots in French charcuterie culture; Le Monnier delivers it with a confidence that keeps the image working a century on.
Reproduced as a fine art archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. A considered addition to any collection of early twentieth-century French commercial art.
