Absinthe Vichet Poster 1 eme Marque of Pontarlier – Vintage Absinthe Poster – Nover 1890
This turn-of-the-century Absinthe Vichet Poster has to be one of the most iconic and popular vintage wines, beers and spirits posters ever created. It was painted by the artist Nover. The exact date of its publication is unknown, with dates online varying between 1885 and 1910. The vintage alcohol poster advertises absinthe, which, during the belle epoque era was one of the most in-demand alcoholic beverages in Paris. The art nouveau artwork is signed by an artist named Nover. There seems to be no information available about the artist although he did create the artwork for another famous absinthe poster for the Absinthe Blanqui brand. Nover’s Absinthe Vichet Poster with its curving forms, yellow flower stem borders, elegant green panels and stylised red and black hand-drawn letters is the epitome of the eras art nouveau style. The focal point of the poster is a radiant young woman. sitting in the dark, she shines from the poster in a silvery blue-grey evening dress and long, white silk gloves. Her hair is immaculately coiffered as she looks up to the sky… a small stemmed glass of the popular beverage.
Absinthe Vichet, located in Ponarlier, was considered a well-known absinthe distiller in its day and was a leader in advertising. This Absinthe Vichet Poster is circa 1900 and is considered a quintessential Art Nouveau image.
The history of Absinthe
The origins of absinthe appear to have been lost in a milky white alcoholic haze. The medicinal qualities of wormwood are known to have been used by the ancient Egyptians from around 1550 BC and that wormwood was also used in remedies and wines by the ancient Greeks.
To discover the history of the famous anis-flavoured drink as a distilled, commercially available spirit, we have to travel back in time to 1792 to a small village in Neuchatel, Switzerland called Couvet (now known as Val-de-Travers). Here the story takes two similar but different paths. The first and most commonly relayed version suggests the drink was created by a Swiss doctor called Dr Pierre Ordinaire. The story claims that the good doctor had created a cure-all medicine recommended for the treatment of headaches, gout, worms, kidney stones, colic and even epilepsy, inadvertently producing the first commercial absinthe! It continues that Ordinaire’s recipe was then passed on to two sisters named Henriod who began manufacturing the elixir as a medical cure.
In an online article called Absinthe and the Sisters Henriod: A More Complete History, on the Wormwood Queen website, writer Kate Henriot Jauw has an alternate take on the absinthe legend. Jauw suggests that it was, in fact, the Sisters Henriod who created the green potion. She explains, “The sisters had long been creating medicinal tinctures and tisanes to help the people in their village of Couvet, Switzerland. Many of their recipes were passed to them from their mother and her mother before. Although the Sisters were well respected and their shoppe well patronized, they still needed to be wary of public opinion and the ever-possible accusation of witchcraft. For even though the final Witchcraft Act of 1735 had been written into law, prosecutions were made for fraud rather than pacts with the Devil, which would still result in death as the punishment”. The act was still acted on in the 1940s to prosecute spiritualists and gypsys and unbelievably wasn’t repealed until 1951.
Kate goes on to explain that the sisters were astute enough to recognise their limitations as women in a male-dominated world and secured the help of their friend Pierre Ordinaire, a French Doctor who had taken up residence in Couvet. The doctor proved to be a natural salesman which led to the selling of the absinthe recipe.
Whichever, of the two stories is true, the result ended with the recipe in the hands of one Major Daniel-Henri Dubied. In 1797, Dubied, together with a business partner Henri-Louis Pernod opened a distillery to produce the medicinal beverage. The Dubied Père et Fils distillery was to become the first of many absinthe factories in Couvet, Switzerland. In 1805, they built a second distillery, the Maison Pernod-Fils in Pontarlier, France. Pernod Fils remained one of the most popular brands of absinthe until the drink was banned in France in 1914.
Absinthe and La Belle Epoque
Absinthe is an anise-flavoured alcoholic spirit derived from the flowers and leaves of the grand wormwood plant, known as Artemisia absinthium, together with green anise, sweet fennel along with other medicinal and culinary herbs. The drink went by many names: Green Goddess, Green Muse, Green Devil and most commonly, La Fee Verte, the Green Fairy and it was beloved by the bohemian crowd of the belle epoque. Poets, writers theatre stars and artists drank it in. Literally. At the end of the nineteenth century, absinthe was embraced by the literary bohemian crowd who gathered in European cafes and claimed the Green Fairy (La Fee Verte) as their muse and inspiration.
Wikipedia states that notable absinthe drinkers from Europe and the Americas, included Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Lewis Carroll, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Aleister Crowley, Erik Satie, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron, and Alfred Jarry.
Absinthe’s popularity grew steadily through the 1840s. Its popularity increased when the drink was given to French troops in North Africa as a malaria preventive. Absinthe became so popular in bars, bistros, cafés, and cabarets by the 1860s that the time between 5 pm and 6pm was known as l’heure verte “the green hour”. La Fee Verte was enjoyed by all social classes, from the wealthy bourgeoisie to poor artists and ordinary working-class people. By the 1880s, mass production had caused the price to drop sharply. In 1874, the French drank 300,000 litres of absinthe. By 1910, they were consuming 36 million litres per year. On top of their annual consumption of almost 5 billion litres of wine!
By the end of the nineteenth century, absinthe was being portrayed as a dangerously addictive psychoactive alcohol and hallucinogen. One of its ingredients thujone was blamed for its alleged harmful effects. High-profile events such as Van Gogh lopping off his ear and the notorious story of Jean Lanfray killing his pregnant wife and two daughters, supposedly as a consequence of drinking la fee verte started to turn the tide. The rise of the temperance movement throughout the world and the supposed scientific evidence put forward by Dr Valentin Magnan pushed the argument further. In truth, it was the popularity of the drink that contributed to its own demise. A lack of control and regulation of the drink enable unscrupulously distillers to manufacture and sell poor quality absinthes, often mixed with harmful and dangerous toxins.
Claims were made by the anti-absinthe activists that Absinthe made people go mad, caused them to see ghosts, and made them hallucinate. They also said that Absinthe was more addictive than other alcoholic beverages. Beer and wine were claimed to be healthy, spirits however were evil and absinthe was the devil. Despite pleas by reputable absinthe distillers, such as Pernod Fils and Absinthe Vichet for quality regulations for the category, the enemies of absinthe pushed to ban the popular drink. The drink was first banned in the Republic of Congo, Belgium in 1905. Other governments around the world followed suit. Absinthe was banned in Brazil in 1906, by Switzerland and the Netherlands by 1910, USA in 1912, France in 1915 and Italy in 1932. All French absinthe distilleries closed their doors, which caused the demise of Pernod Fils in France.
Studies have shown that absinthe’s psychoactive properties (other than those attributable to alcohol) have been exaggerated. It seems drinking absinthe is no more dangerous than drinking any other alcoholic drink. After being banned in France, Europe and America for almost 100 years the green, anise-flavoured spirit is now available once more and there is a resurgence in the consumption of La Fee Verte.
