Vintage Poster Archives
La Grande Roue de Paris 1899 | Belle Epoque Poster
La Grande Roue de Paris 1899 | Belle Epoque Poster
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Two allegorical figures in white classical drapery stand before the iron arc of the Grande Roue, scarves lifted in motion, the Ferris wheel filling the sky behind them in dark silhouette against a layered sunset of cerulean blue and cadmium orange. The Paris skyline resolves to silhouettes at the horizon. Bold red hand-lettered display type occupies the lower quarter in the rounded fairground register of French commercial lithography in the late 1890s.
The Grande Roue de Paris was a 96-metre Ferris wheel constructed on the Avenue de Suffren in 1899 for the Exposition Universelle of 1900, at its opening the tallest wheel in the world and a deliberate counterpart to the Eiffel Tower. This poster was printed by Imprimerie J. Barreau of Paris, one of the commercial lithographic houses active in the final years of the Belle Epoque affiche tradition. The anonymous designer works in the established French vernacular: the classically robed allegorical female as emblem of civic spectacle, the saturated layered palette that the major affichistes of the 1890s had made familiar to Parisian audiences.
The design belongs to a specific moment in Parisian visual culture: the years between the Moulin Rouge affiches of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Art Nouveau work of Mucha and Grasset, when commercial lithography had absorbed the lessons of fine-art poster making and was deploying them at scale for entertainment and exposition advertising.
Reproduced as an archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, pigment inks, no optical brighteners. The natural white tone of the paper suits the warm terracotta and orange of the original palette.
