The heyday of the poster as an art form was the turn of the century, although it was as far back as 1867 that Jules Cheret began producing full-colour pictorial posters that were rapidly emulated by commercial artists in France, Germany, Britain and America. These colourful lithographic posters publicised music halls, cabarets, ballrooms, operas, theatres and ice-rinks. More mundane, and therefore generally less desirable although still very expensive nowadays, are the posters which advertised cigarettes and tobacco, wines and spirits, beers, corsetry, clothing, cosmetics and foodstuffs, often in an artistic setting. By the 1890s posters also promoted the bicycling craze and good examples of this genre rate a high premium.

French posters reached their acme at the turn of the century, the market being dominated by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Pierre Bonnard whose signed, limited editions now rival fine art in the high prices they command at auction, but the work of their successors, such as Grasset, Mucha, Steinlen, Lefevre, De Feure, Ibels and Anquetin are now rising rapidly in price. Elsewhere in Europe the names to watch out for include Privat-Livemont, Meunier, Thorn Prikker, Jan Toorop, Mignot, Berchmans, Sattler, Otto Fischer and Jo Steiner. Some of the greatest artists of the Art Nouveau period designed posters and examples by Koloman Moser, Henry van de Velde, Oscar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele and Wassily Kandinsky now command very high prices.


British posters in the period from 1890 to 1914 developed distinctive styles. In this category the names to look out for include Walker, Hassall, Dudley Hardy, the Beggarstaff Brothers, Greiffenhagen, Phil May, Cecil Aldin, Baumer, Walter Crane, Tom Browne, Harry Furniss, Yendis and Will True. In the same period the most sought after American posters are those by Will Bradley, Cochran, Scotson-Clark, Bird, Penley, Penfield, Mayor, Max Parrish, Rhead, Ethel Reed and Giannini. Among the later artists in this medium may be mentioned Norman Rockwell, Kees van Dongen, McKnight Kauffer, Montgomery Flagg and Leon Bakst.