Eugène Grasset (1845-1917) Grafton Gallery, London. Decorative Art Exhibition. Poster. 1893. Gillotage ("Verdoux, Ducourtioux et Huillard, Sc.") and stenciled colors. 455x660mm. Arwas p. 31. Fine proof on thin buff vellum, lined on strong white vellum and covered with cloth. Numerous fine folds and fractures (barely perceptible) on the surface. Short tears at edges. "The mid-1880s marked Grasset's debut as a poster artist, where he soon acquired a great reputation, working for the trade as well as for bookshops, art exhibitions and the theater. His first compositions were still based on the neo-medieval register and reflected a pictorial approach. But from the early 1890s, his formal language, influenced by Japanese prints, became clearer and more monumental. Drawings are broadly circumscribed, and flat tints of color produce luminous effects. However, Grasset maintains a stern tone and does not bow to the racy injunctions of advertising. He relies on ornamental and chromatic richness. His timeless women have the solemn character of classical allegories. This poster for an exhibition of French decorative art at London's Grafton Gallery, with its extreme simplification of form and great tonal freshness, its wide swathes of color delimited by black contour lines, puts into practice all the lessons Grasset learned from his stained glass practice. The draped young woman, her long red hair untied, is depicted in a medium shot, three-quarter view and slightly off-center. Reflectively, she holds a basket of roses and is about to pick a flower from the iris bed in the foreground, inspired by the engravings of Hiroshige and Hokusaï. The neo-Botticellian type of the gardener and the correspondences the artist suggests between nature and the female temperament were widely echoed by his contemporaries. They inspired descriptions by the Symbolists that bear witness to a reception of Grasset's work far removed from that of today. Thus, in 1894, the Swiss William Ritter described this poster in the following terms: "A vision that one does not forget, where decadent anemia and chlorosis unite with the deep, intense brilliance of stained glass." (Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne).