Josephine au Bal Negre $450.00

About Vintage Parisian Posters

In 1963, during a renovation of the offices of a Parisian literary journal, workmen found hundreds of Toulouse-Lautrec posters rolled up under the floorboards. The ones in the best condition could be bought for a few hundred dollars. Even in the 1970s, one dealer had 100 copies of Lautrec’s Divan Japonais, which he sold for $800 each.

Today these posters sell for $25,000 and more. In 1989, Toulouse-Lautrec’s 3-sheet Moulin Rouge sold for $220,000, at the time, the highest price ever paid for a fine art poster at auction. If this masterpiece were available today, it might bring two to four times that amount.

When the market for vintage advertising posters emerged in the late 1970s, much of the attention focused on French artists like Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, and Jules Cheret. Posters from these artists, as well as from those of the Art Deco period, notably Cassandre and Fix-Masseau, brought the highest prices.

As the market has matured, however, it has also broadened. Scholarship and museum shows afford new discoveries every year. Italian, Swiss, Russian, Dutch, German and British posters have developed into specialties with prices that have risen steadily in the last decade. The market has also strengthened for many category niches such as travel posters, Olympics, and war and propaganda. Today, virtually every poster style and period can be found, with good images that can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands.