POSTER  , a

placard in the form either of letterpress or illustration, for posting up or otherwise exhibiting in public to attract attention to its contents . According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, before the Fire of London the rails and posts which protected foot-passengers in the streets were used for affixing theatrical and other announcements, whence the name of posting-bills or posters; and in later times the name has come more generally into use for any fairly large separate sheet, illustrated or not, used to attract publicity, even though not actually posted up . In the article ADVERTISEMENTS the use of posters is discussed, and newspaper posters (or contents bills) under NEWSPAPERS . But the illustrated poster has come to represent a special form of artistic design . The earliest examples of pictorial posters were adorned with rough woodcuts . When lithography became a common commercial process, wood-blocks ceased to be employed . The modern artistic poster made a definite beginning in France about 1836, with a design by Lalance to advertise a book entitled Comment meurent les femmes . His example was followed by C . Nanteuil, D . A . M . Raffet, Gavarni, Bertrand, Grandville, Tony Johannot, E. de Beaumont, T .

H .

Frere, Edouard Manet and other artists of high repute . Most of these early designs were printed in black on white or tinted paper . Between 186o and 1866 crude attempts at printing posters in colours were made in both France and England . In 1866 Jules Cheret began what was destined to be the most noticeable series of pictorial placards in existence, a series containing over a thousand items . Cheret was originally employed in a litho-graphic establishment in England before he began to work for him-self, and he used his knowledge there acquired to adapt all three primary colours, economically used, to astonishingly brilliant ends . For a considerable time he remained without a rival, though he had hosts of imitators . Eugene Grasset, a decorative designer of great versatility, produced the first of a small number of placards which, though inferior as advertisements to those of Cheret, were learned and beautiful decorations . Somewhat later a sensation was caused in Paris by the mordantly grotesque posters of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, in which the artist reduced detail to a mini-mum and obtained bold effects by the employment of large masses of flat colour . Important work, similar in character to Lautrec,'s, was produced by Ibels, Bonnard, T . A . Steinlen and others .

A new and contrary direction was given to poster design by Mucha, a Hungarian

resident in Paris, whose placards are marked by delicate colour and richness of detail . The ;following are amongst French artists who have designed posters of conspicuous merit: J . L . Forain, Willette, Paleologue, Sinet, Jossot, Roedel, Mayet, Cazals, Biais, De Feure, A . Guillaume, Ranft, Realier-Dumas, F . Valloton and Metivet . Occasionally eminent French painters, such as Carriere, Boutet de Monvel, Aman-Jean, Schwabe, have made essays in poster-designing . In England the first artists of repute to attempt the pictorial placard were Godfroy Durand and Walter Crane; but the first bill to attract widespread attention was one by Fred Walker to advertise a dramatized version of The Woman in White (1871) . This was engraved on wood by W . H . Hooper . Shortly after this time pictures by Royal Academicians and others began to be re-produced as advertisements (the best-known case being that of Sir John Millais's " Bubbles "), but these have nothing directly to do with poster-designing .

Stacy Marks,

Hubert von Herkomer (the great poster for the Magazine of Art), Sir Edward Poynter and Sir James Linton are among popular painters who have made special drawings for reproduction as posters . About 1894 the English poster began to improve . Designs by Aubrey Beardsley for the Avenue Theatre, by Dudley Hardy for various plays, and by Maurice Greiffenhagen for The Pall Mall Budget, were widely' noticed by reason of their originality, simplicity and effectiveness . Simplicity was carried even farther by " the Beggarstaff Brothers " (James Pryde and William Nicholson), whose posters are perhaps the most original yet produced by Englishmen . Among other British designers the following have executed artistic and interesting placards: Frank Brangwyn, R . Anning Bell, John Hassall, Cecil Aldin, Phil May, Leonard Raven-Hill, Henry Harland, Robert Fowler, Wilson Steer, Charles R . Mackintosh, MacNair and MacDonald, Edgar Wilson, Charles I . Foulkes, Mabel Dearmer, Albert Morrow and C . Wilhelm . Poster design on the continent of Europe has been largely influenced by French work, but designs of much originality have been made in Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain . In Germany, among the most typical posters are those of Sattler, Otto Fischer, Gysis, T . T .

Heine, Speyer, Max Klinger, Dasio, Hofmann and L . Zumbrusch . The principal Belgian designers include Privat Livemont, Rassenfosse, Berchmans, Meunier, Duyck and Crespin, V . Mignot, Donnay, Evenepoel, Cassiers and Toussaint . Of Italian designers those whose work is most characteristic are Mataloni and Hohenstein; while the best Spanish posters—those to advertise bull-fights and fairs—are mostly anonymous . The Spanish artists Utrillo and Casas have signed posters of more than It has been suggested that this use is due to the custom of the symbolic use of flowers . Skeat quotes the title of a tract (Heber's MSS . No . 1442), " A new yeare's guifte, or a posie made upon certen flowers," &c . " Posy rings," plain or engraved gold rings with a " posy " inscribed on the inside of the hoops, were very frequently in use as betrothal rings from the 16th to the 18th centuries . Common " posies " were such lines as " In thee my choice I do rejoice," " As God decreed so we agreed," and the like . There are several rings of this kind in the British Museum .