Savon Normal French Soap 1895 Original Poster

Etienne Maurice Firmin Bouisset (1859-1925) was a French painter, poster artist and printmaker. Bouisset created posters with enduring images for a number of different French food companies such as Maggi and Lefèvre-Utile For the latter company, he used their LU initials as an ad logo as part of an 1897 poster image for a line of butter biscuits featuring "The Little Schoolboy" (French: Petit Ecolier) of which a variation is still being used by the company today. However, Firmin Bouisset is probably most famous for his posters for the French chocolate manufacturer, Menier. Bouisset's work was part of the Maîtres de l'Affiche as well as L'Estampe Moderne, the leading publisher of original French prints during the late nineteenth century. Today, many of his posters are very popular with collectors and because they are no longer copyright protected are being duplicated and sold on the Internet and in retail outlets in many countries. This poster, an advertising for Savon Normal or "Normal Soap", features a young girl getting ready to tackle dirt and grime with a large bar of soap on her shoulder. Particulars: This lithographic poster has been professionally conserved and backed on acid-free linen paper (see poster and print conservation and restoration). The poster has a French tax stamp near the top, left corner. Tax stamps were required before posters were allowed to be posted on a city wall. Any poster which survives today that has a tax stamp was likely taken out of the billposter's stack of posters before it could be pasted up. Tax stamps add an interesting bit of history to a poster.