Vintage Poster Archives
Chauffard Le Markstein 1932 | Vosges Ski Poster
Chauffard Le Markstein 1932 | Vosges Ski Poster
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A female skier in a deep crimson turtleneck stands on a rose-tinted Vosges snowfield, orange-red wooden skis crossing the foreground. She surveys the mountain behind her: a lone descending figure in the mid-distance, a large modernist hotel complex across the hillside, scattered skiers on the upper slopes, and a flat cobalt sky filling the top quarter of the sheet. Chauffard gave the composition nearly its entire surface area to the pale snowfield, the figure a single colour accent anchoring the lower third.
Designed for the Chemins de Fer d'Alsace et de Lorraine, the French state railway that operated the Alsace and Lorraine network from 1919 until its nationalisation into the SNCF on 1 January 1938, this poster promoted Le Markstein as the region's new high-altitude winter sports station at 1,240 metres in the Vosges. The artist is recorded as Chauffard in the Library of Congress catalogue and in Swann Galleries auction records, though the signature on known examples has been noted as difficult to read precisely; a 1932 tax stamp on an auction copy provides the firmest date evidence. It was lithographed by Lucien Serre & Cie of Paris, the house responsible for a substantial portion of French railway poster production during the interwar period, including work for the PLM.
The flat rendering of the snowfield in warm rose-pink, the simplified Art Deco figure, and the restrained palette, crimson, slate grey, cobalt, cream, place this within the visual language the French rail companies developed through the 1920s and early 1930s to frame their routes as access to modern leisure. The AL was a short-lived but active patron of this tradition, and Le Markstein posters represent its most sustained graphic investment in winter tourism. Reproduced here as an archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper.
A natural choice for anyone drawn to interwar French graphic design, the history of ski tourism, or the regional railways that built the Belle-Epoque and Art Deco leisure landscape of northeastern France.
