l’Escarmouche | Maitre de L’Affiche: Plate #6

This artwork is from Les Maitres de L'Affiche series. These miniature versions of outstanding stone lithographs are of the most important advertising posters of the time. Featured in this print is the common-man attending the bar, with brown tones. Behind the window, you see men at war with rifles & bayonets. “The contrast between the capital-owning classes with army bayonets behind them and the ordinary people caused widespread bitterness. For the common man the bar-counter became a barricade at which he voiced his dissatisfaction with the situation. In his day Ibel's admirers placed him on a par with Toulouse-Lautrec, perhaps because what one might call his stenographic drawing has much in common with Lautrec. L'Escamouche (the Skirmish) is an interesting specimen of French poster art, which, however, because of the mysterious laws governing placards and posters, was never displayed on the streets but could only appear inside closed rooms, as is expressly stated on this poster”(bottom right) (Paris 1900, p.58) “Ibels and Lautrec were major contributors to a curiously short-lived publication, L'Escarmouche, which lasted only three months from Nov.1893 to Jan.1894. Yet in this brief period, the magazine drew on what could be termed a million-dollar pool of talent; just look at the contributors” (lower right) (Wine Spectator, 56)