ART & ARTISTS: F. Hugo d’Alési

Romanian-born Frédéric Hugo d'Alési was one of the earliest artists to design posters for the French railway companies. They were printed using a process akin to chromolithography, called simile-aquarelle ("faux watercolour"), that required up to 20 different colours to render the final image, making them much more richly printed, detailed and painterly than the travel posters from subsequent decades. By some accounts, he designed "hundreds for the railway companies." It was such an expensive process that it drove the artist into bankruptcy shortly before his premature death. D'Alési's posters caught the eye of many in France and around the world, including Paul Cézanne, who commented, "I should like to do decorative landscapes like Hugo d'Alési, yes, with my small sensibility."

This is part 1 of 3 on the works of Frédéric Hugo d'Alési:

c1882 Bou Amana et son Coursier Grand Galop by J. Bach
sheet music cover

1889 P.L.M. Aix-les-Bains
(Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée)

c 1890s Le Dauphiné
Les Gorges de la Bourne
103.5 x 72.5 cm

c 1890s Mer de Glace
(Mont Blanc, Savoie)
103 x 72.5 cm

1892 Tunisie
103.5 x 72.5 cm

1894 Centenaire de la Lithographie

D’Alesi, who was one of the organisers of the exhibition “Centenary of Lithography,” offers an elegant timeline of the medium’s history, from the early black-and-white works of Nicholas-Toussaint Charlet to the contemporary, colourful designs of Jules Chéret. This is the original maquette for the poster, which “represents the ambiguities that were inherent in the evolving status of the contemporary middle-class woman, who may visit galleries and even collect prints yet also knows that she herself is looked at and therefore orchestrates her appearance and gestures.