The JOB collection is a production of graphic works consisting of calendars, posters and postcards advertising the JOB rolling paper factory. Artistic in character, it was illustrated by renowned painters and poster artists, mainly during the Art Nouveau period.
The owners of the JOB brand, grandchildren and allies of founder Jean Bardou, were industrialists and patrons of the arts. From 1895 until the Great War they enlisted the help of numerous artists, often their close friends, to advertise cigarette paper. 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. Alphonse Mucha's two most famous productions, La femme blonde and La femme brune, were a huge success and are still highly sought after by collectors today.
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. Recent biographies of the artists and the poster collections held in museums allow us to attempt to reconstruct the completeness of the collection up to the 1920s, when creation became very sporadic. Later, artists influenced by JOB and Art Nouveau revived certain posters. In the 1960s, a JOB poster by Mucha was reinterpreted with a psychedelic effect, and in 2008, Stuck artist Paul Harvey proposed a new version of the brand's advertising posters.
The JOB collection is a significant example of the "marriage of Art and Industry", one of the foundations of Art Nouveau, in the field of graphic arts.
JOB, advertising and Art Nouveau artistic creation
Advertising and Art Nouveau
Around 1900 Art Nouveau and postcards were at their peak. It was a period of fundamental renewal for the arts; nature and the flower-woman were, like Japonisme, a source of inspiration for artists.
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. The use of the three primary colors (blue, yellow, red), to which black is added, makes it possible to obtain all possible shades and nuances.
Thanks to this collaboration Art Nouveau was democratized through small-format reproductions on paper, and entered every household. Artistic advertising and postcards illustrated the vocation of Art Nouveau, intended as "art for all" and a marriage of Art and Industry. Even if, for Paul Éluard, they represented only "the small currency of art", they "sometimes give the idea of gold".
Bardou family, industrialists and sponsors
Products such as cigarette rolling papers were promoted through advertising and catchwords: people bought what they saw, better than what they thought they saw. Such was the case with advertisements for the Bardou family's JOB cigarette paper.
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. A wealthy industrialist and sponsor of the arts, part of his estate consisted of art collections. After his death in 1892, his three children, Camille, Justin and Jeanne, formed the Pierre Bardou-Job company in memory of their father. It was formed by Justin Bardou-Job, Charles Ducup de St Paul, Camille's husband, and Jules Pams, Jeanne's husband. As evidence of this period, there is a gouache advertising project by Alfons Mucha showing a variant of La Femme Blonde, dressed in blue on a black background, with the word JOB inscribed in red in the background. Above the drawing is the name Pierre Bardou-Job, the address of the Perpignan head office and below that of a Toulouse operator.
The Bardou family and their allies, in particular the Pams and Ducup de Saint Paul families, were astute industrialists but also patrons of the arts with refined tastes, asking their artist friends to illustrate the cigarette paper company's products with advertisements. Relations between this family and renowned painters were close: Georges de Feure spent his vacations with the Bardou-Pams family, and Paul Jean Gervais and Alphonse Mucha were close friends. 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 addition to Bouisset, Meunier, Chéret, and the already famous Mucha, they were able to enlist the help of numerous artists. In all some 30 painters and designers of first or second rank collaborated on the brand's advertising creations between 1895 and 1925.
JOB Art Nouveau Collection
Thanks to Art Nouveau art magazines, fairs and, above all, the many poster competitions, the artists became better known and commissions were received. In 1896, for example, a major exhibition of French and foreign posters was held in Reims, attended by the leading illustrators of the day. The 202-page catalog announced "a description of the 1,690 most beautiful posters (...) and portraits of 48 of the leading artists". Indeed, Alphonse Mucha worked alongside the young Jane Atché, Firmin Bouisset and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The latter's project was not retained, while Jane Atché's was taken over by the JOB company with a few modifications.
Between 1895 and 1916 thirty-two works, including those reproduced on postcards, were signed by the greatest names of the time. 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. The article presents the website, the JOB virtual museum by Frédéric Vavasseur and Jean-Louis Venet. Mucha's La Femme Blonde (1896) was a huge success, sold as a popular edition at 3 francs and as a deluxe edition. In addition to the paper prints, the illustrations were reproduced on various supports, such as tobacco or cigarette boxes in lithographed sheet metal. In addition to these 32 well-referenced pieces, there are some fifteen other creations, curiously under-referenced, such as the poster by Louis Vallet (circa 1900), the poster by Manuel Orazi (circa 1900) and at least two posters by Gaspar Camps (circa 1915), to name but a few well-known artists.
The recurring theme of the collection was women, often with cigarette in hand, whose wisps of smoke or background indicated that "she was smoking with JOB". The woman who smoked was certainly a liberated woman, but in the conservative society of the time it was not a sign of class. In his book France fin de siècle, Eugen Weber wrote that "women who smoked were low-class women or criminals", and in the 1890s, respectable women who smoked were considered "either eccentrics or feminists demanding gender equality". While Mucha's La Femme Blonde echoed this stereotype of a scatterbrained, half-closed-eyed woman intoxicated by frivolous pleasures, Jane Atché is considered one of the first artists to portray the JOB-smoking woman in a positive light, rather than as a light-hearted woman paving the way for many other female conquests.
Illustrators
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. Abandoned and often destroyed, some of them are now reappearing, in more or less good condition, for a second life. Sometimes, entire stacks are found in the stocks of former dealers. 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. 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. So, for the most part, the memory has been preserved.
Famous painters and designers who contributed to the JOB collection:
Not to forget the unpublished projects: Soldat fumant sa pipe by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and a series of four smoking women by Georges de Feure.
Alongside these big names, other illustrators also contributed to the production of the collection:
Angelo Asti (1847–1903), French school. Of Italian descent, born in Paris, where he produced most of his work. A genre and portrait painter, he exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1890 onwards. While he is best known for his paintings of women in dreamy or glamorous poses, he is even better known to cartophiles for his enormous output of postcards. Julien Duvocelle (1873–1961), French school. He exhibited regularly at the Salon from 1897 onwards, winning awards including a bronze medal at the 1900 Universal Exhibition. A portrait painter, his contribution as a poster artist and postcard illustrator is less well known. Lluís Graner (1863–1929), Spanish school. This painter is known for his drawings and poster illustrations. A member of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, he won a prize at the 1889 Universal Exhibition. His works are exhibited at the National Art Museum of Catalonia. Joseph Granié (1866–1915), French school. A student of Jean-Léon Gérôme, this painter began his career in Toulouse before moving to Paris. A talented artist, he distinguished himself by the eclecticism of his work. He exhibited a variety of subjects several times at the Salon des artistes français. Museums in Toulouse and Paris have preserved some of his works, such as Portrait d'Yvette Guilbert (Musée d'Orsay). Gabriel Hervé (1868–?), French school. Born in Charente, France, he was a portrait and genre painter. From 1903, he was a member of the Société des Artistes Français. André Joyeux (1871–1929), French school. A former student at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he moved to Cochinchina around 1900. In 1906, he exhibited paintings for the Tonkin pavilion at the Marseille colonial exhibition. He became the first teacher and director of the Gia Định School of Applied Arts (Trường Mỹ nghệ thực hành Gia Định) founded in 1913 on the outskirts of Saigon. He was a painter and illustrator of books on colonial life such as Silhouettes Saigonnaises (Saigon, 1909), La Vie des grandes colonies (Paris: Maurice Bauche, 1912), among others. Eugène Loup (1867–1948), French school. This Aveyron painter is known for his grisaille figures. He exhibited at the Salon des artistes français and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He was awarded a medal at the 1900 Universal Exhibition.