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Cappiello Absinthe Pernot 1902 | Vintage Advertising Poster
Cappiello Absinthe Pernot 1902 | Vintage Advertising Poster
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A man in a black top hat rests his chin on folded hands and watches, with a slight smirk, as his companion raises a pale green glass to her lips. She wears a floor-length black dress patterned with small red motifs and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with a spotted red bow. Two bottles, a carafe and a second glass sit between them on a small café table, all set against a flat amber-gold ground. The composition reduces the entire social theatre of the Parisian café to two figures and a product that barely needs naming.
Designed by Leonetto Cappiello in 1902 and printed by Imp. P. Vercasson & Cie., 43 Rue de Lancry, Paris. This is catalogue reference Cappiello/Rennert, 12, one of the earliest lithographs from Cappiello's Vercasson period (1900–1918), during which the Italian-born caricaturist was systematically replacing the ornate detail of Chéret and Mucha with flat colour, bold silhouette and a single social or comic gesture. The client was J. Édouard Pernot, a distillery in Montbéliard (Doubs) producing absinthe under the Mont-Christ label. Absinthe was prohibited across most of Europe by 1915, which makes posters from its commercial heyday rarer by the decade.
Reproduced here as a 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art print using pigment-based archival inks. The amber-gold ground, one of the most saturated in Cappiello's early palette, holds cleanly on the matte surface, and the contrast between the flat black of the figures and the warm ground reads with the same graphic punch that made the original stop pedestrians on the boulevards of Paris.
Sits naturally with other Belle Époque advertising lithographs or alongside mid-century aperitif posters. The palette reads warmly in dining rooms and bar areas.
