Vintage Poster Archives
Chocolat Carpentier 1895 | Henry Gerbault Poster
Chocolat Carpentier 1895 | Henry Gerbault Poster
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A stout nanny in a red bonnet holds a wide-eyed baby in white christening clothes. To her right, on a green-draped table, a black cat bends into a steaming bowl while a pale fawn pug scrambles up from below. The brand name CHOCOLAT CARPENTIER floats through the steam cloud above in bold hand-lettered black type, all set against a saturated cadmium yellow ground. The scenario is domestic comedy rendered in the warm, assured linework of late nineteenth-century French illustration.
Henry Gerbault (1863-1930) trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts before establishing himself as one of the most recognisable illustrators in Belle Epoque Paris, with regular work in La Vie Parisienne and Le Rire. The Chocolat Carpentier affiche was printed by Courmont Freres, Paris, around 1895, and its quality earned it selection as Plate 83 of Les Maitres de l'Affiche, the Imprimerie Chaix subscription series that documented the finest poster art of the 1895-1900 period and remains a primary reference for collectors of French graphic art.
The composition sits within a tradition of French consumer advertising lithography that favoured wit and observed domestic life over aspiration: the hierarchy of baby, cat and pug competing for the same bowl is a single joke that communicates the product's appeal without argument.
A vintage food poster well suited to kitchens, dining rooms and any wall where the graphic confidence of the Belle Epoque is welcome. Reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks.
