As manifestations of the French capital’s buoyant commercial culture and dynamic street life, the large color posters designed by Jules Chéret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and a coterie of other innovative commercial artists working in the 1880s and 1890s count among the most iconic symbols of fin-de-siècle Paris (figs. 68 and 69).¹ There are several reasons for this, not least the sheer ubiquity of posters in the urban landscape. Posted on the sides of buildings, construction partitions, public urinals, and omnibuses, inside of train stations, and on specially designed columns and kiosks throughout the city, these large full-color advertisements had an