Vintage Poster Archives
Eriol Cyclo-Touriste 1938 | Le Monnier Cycling Poster
Eriol Cyclo-Touriste 1938 | Le Monnier Cycling Poster
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A man and a woman in matching red jackets and white-brimmed caps pedal a fully-laden tandem bicycle along a French country road. Poplar trees line the background; a small white farmhouse sits to the right; the rear rack carries bulging brown leather panniers. At the top left, the hand-lettered script 'La route est belle!.. avec...' runs in two cheerful lines. Bold red slab-serif type anchors the bottom: CYCLO-TOURISTE ERIOL.
Designed by Henry Le Monnier (1893–1978) and printed by Joseph Charles, Paris, in 1938. The commission belongs to Le Monnier's most productive phase, when he worked under the Joseph Charles imprint (1934–43) producing vigorous, approachable advertising lithographs in a mode that owed something to Cappiello's bold silhouette tradition and something to the Art Deco preoccupation with movement and leisure. Eriol was a French cycle manufacturer active in the late 1930s, when tandem touring had become a mainstream leisure activity for young couples crossing the French countryside. This poster was produced at the high point of that culture, two years before the German occupation shut down the leisure economy entirely.
The composition is deliberately kinetic: the riders lean forward, the bicycle frame is rendered in precise chrome detail, and the flat green and blue background planes give the whole scene a sense of forward speed. The red of the jackets, repeated in the logotype, pulls the eye across the full width of the landscape format.
Reproduced from an archival source of the original stone lithograph as a 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper print. A natural fit for anyone interested in the interwar French commercial poster tradition, in cycling history, or in the confident graphic language of late-1930s European advertising.
