JOB Collection
The owners of the JOB brand, grandchildren and allies of founder Jean Bardou, were industrialists and patrons of the arts.
Painters and illustrators representing the main artistic currents of the time, from academic painter Paul Jean Gervais to Catalan Modernist Ramon Casas, from orientalist Georges Rochegrosse to Montmartre humorist Charles Léandre, as well as Jane Atché, all contributed.
This collection of 32 works became known to the general public through calendar and poster prints, and was widely distributed as postcards in France and abroad.
Alongside this well-referenced production, other works do not benefit from the widespread distribution offered by the postcard, either because they remained at the sketch stage, such as the soldiers imagined by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, or because they were only the subject of rare posters, such as the Spanish ones by Gaspar Camps.
Painters, even the glories of academicism, were not reluctant to take part in the many poster and postcard competitions that were published in large numbers: Lefèvre-Utile, La Meuse, Nestlé, Byrrh... Thousands of posters of cartoonist Jules Chéret's famous Chérette, ancestor of the Pin-up, covered the walls of Paris, paving the way for Alphonse Mucha and the many painters whose main source of inspiration was women.
Based on artists' designs, printers used the chromolithography reproduction process, a four-color printing technique developed in 1839 by Godefroy Engelmann.
In the second half of the 19th century Pierre Bardou-Job turned the cigarette-paper manufacturing workshops created by his father Jean Bardou into a large-scale factory.
After his death in 1892, his three children, Camille, Justin and Jeanne, formed the Pierre Bardou-Job company in memory of their father.
[4] What's more, Edgar Maxence's 1901 calendar, La femme rousse à l'orchidée, a Symbolist painting whose original is in the Musée d'Orsay, is a portrait of Pierre Job-Bardou's daughter Jeanne.
In 1896, for example, a major exhibition of French and foreign posters was held in Reims, attended by the leading illustrators of the day.
[6] Indeed, Alphonse Mucha worked alongside the young Jane Atché, Firmin Bouisset and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
Most often published as calendars, they were reproduced on postcards from 1903, given their success, and were sold or given as end-of-year gifts to the brand's factory workers.
[9] In addition to the paper prints, the illustrations were reproduced on various supports, such as tobacco or cigarette boxes in lithographed sheet metal.
[12] Often scrupulously preserved in attics after the ephemeris had been used, calendars were forgotten after the war when fashions changed and past tragedies were erased from memory.
As skilled salesmen who were able to convince the customer that a print run of several thousand copies was "only slightly more expensive" than the one required, the representatives of the poster companies also unwittingly contributed to the longevity of the work.
[13] Throughout this time, it is also thanks to the many collectors trying to reconstitute the JOB collection that the memory has been preserved, all the more so as the cards generally bear the references of the calendar or poster they reproduce.
[15] Alongside these big names, other illustrators also contributed to the production of the collection: Other illustrators include Cyprien Boulez, a portrait painter; Nguyen Duc Thuc; G. Maurice, possibly a pseudonym; and Félix Thuillière, a French military painter and academy officer[28] who died in Toulouse in 1926.
[32] The 32nd drawing corresponded to the 1916 calendar by painter Eugène Loup, listed by Italian author Carmello Calò Carducci in 1987.
[31] Finally, in 2001, the number of postcards was revised upwards, to around 126 for the major series (according to the table below),[8] but this inventory remains theoretical, due to variations in certain editions.
This series is said to be subject to certain peculiarities: the 1910 Gervais calendar was mistakenly dated 1911, and the text on the Ng Duc Thuc card was adapted.
[64] The few rigorously geometric[65] posters of the brand from the 1940s, though worthy of note, do not stand out from the mass of advertising of the period; they were often anonymous.
In 1966, Alphonse Mucha's 1897 JOB poster was reinterpreted by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley with a psychedelic effect.
These measures could have put a stop to tobacco advertising, but the brand's artistic creations had already fallen into disuse at a time of serious financial difficulties.
[69] Nevertheless, in 2008, JOB asked British punk musician, painter and stuckist Paul Harvey, an artist inspired by Art Nouveau,[70] to update the brand's advertising posters.
Gilbert and George supported this graphic creation, unlike other artist duos, The Mighty Boosh or The White Stripes, who appeared on the poster projects without their agreement.
[71] The posters featured both real and imaginary characters, with no direct allusion to the brand except through collective memory.
Thus, in a very Art Nouveau setting featuring Edgar Maxence's 1903 calendar frieze, and in a symmetrical composition, Gilbert and George posed standing framing Le pacha, the emblematic character imagined by Leonetto Cappiello almost a century earlier, as if to "come full circle".
While art lovers and collectors prefer chromolithographic plates that are easy to recognize, the market is flooded with "decorative posters", reproductions of images at low prices.
