Champagne Ruinart poster, 1896 Alphonse Mucha
The Maison á Ruinart has been commercially producing its popular “wine with bubbles” since 1729. Although the house of Gosset can trace its heritage back to its founding in Aÿ in 1584 and is therefore legitimately the oldest existing wine house in Champagne, the wines at this time were still, not sparkling. The founding of the house of Ruinart by Nicholas Ruinart in 1792 gives the Champagne producers the special honor of being the oldest champagne-producing house in the Champagne region. It has been producing sparkling wines ever since.
In 1895, the director of the company, André Ruinart, had been impressed by the Gizmoda poster Mucha had created for Sarah Bernhardt. And was probably more impressed by the publicity it generated and the popularity it had enjoyed with the French public. André Ruinart, commissioned the Czech artist to illustrate a Ruinart Champagne poster to promote his sparkling wine. It was Champagne Ruinart’s first advert and was so successful that it started a long-standing connection between Ruinart and the Arts that exists to this day.
This publicity poster for Ruinart champagne was one of the first that Mucha produced for Champenois Lithography. It dates from 1896, the same year as the first Bernhardt posters. Whilst the poster artwork doesn’t have the same attention to detail or embellishment as either the Bernhardt posters or the Moet & Chandon posters it certainly has charm and features many of Mucha’s attributes. At the top of the poster print the copy reads Champagne Ruinart Pére et Fils. The tall narrow poster is then filled with a large image of an elegantly dressed young woman.The young woman is dressed in a long white gown and she has a blue silk shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Most striking is the length of the young woman’s auburn hair as it billows and cascades down to the floor behind her. She is portrayed holding a champagne glass, but rather than sipping from the glass, she is holding it up proudly, as if it were a victory trophy, as if the beverage is almost too good to drink!
The Maison á Champagne Ruinart
The House of Ruinart was founded in the city of Reims, France. The select Champagne house is steeped in history. Founded just a year after a Royal Decree in 1728, whereby Louis XV gave his consent for sparkling wines to be shipped in bottles instead of casks. Baskets containing 50 to 100 bottles at a time could be transported, opening sales opportunities throughout Europe. The first delivery of Ruinart sparkling wine left the champagne house in January 1730. It was originally offered as a business gift for cloth purchasers. as Dom Ruinart’s brother was a cloth merchant, but six years later Maison Ruinart terminated its cloth-selling activities due to the successful growth of its Champagne business.
Other Alphonse Mucha posters
Alphonse Mucha was born on 24 July 1860 in Ivančice in southern Moravia in the Austrian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic. Following his education, Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where his career began as an illustrator for magazines such as La Vie Populaire, Le Petit Francais Illustre, La Costume au théâtre, and Art et Decoration. His illustrations began to give him a regular income and led to book illustrations, including works for Guy de Maupassant’s novel The Useless Beauty, Charles Seignobos’s book Scenes and Episodes of German History, and a children’s book of poetry by Eugène Manuel.
At the start of 1895, Mucha’s career took a significant upturn when he created a poster for the French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt. The story tells that Bernhardt called Maurice de Brunhoff, the manager of the publishing firm Lemercier which printed her theatrical posters. She rang on 26 December 1894 to order a new poster for her upcoming tour in the New Year. Because of the holidays, none of the regular artists were available, which forced Brunhoff to ask Mucha to quickly design the new poster for Bernhardt. What Mucha came up with is simply outstanding. The Sarah Bernhardt American Tour Poster was more than life-size; a little more than two meters high, with Bernhardt in the costume of a Byzantine noblewoman. She was portrayed in an orchid headdress and floral stole, holding a palm branch in the Easter procession near the end of the play. One of the innovative features of the posters was the ornate rainbow-shaped arch behind the head, almost like a halo, which focused attention on her face; this feature appeared in all of his future theater posters. Probably because of a shortage of time, some areas of the background were left blank, without his usual decoration. The only background decoration were the mosaic tiles behind her head. The poster featured extremely fine draftsmanship and delicate pastel colors, unlike the typical brightly-colored posters of the time. The top of the poster, with the title, was richly composed and ornamented, and balanced the bottom, where the essential information was given in the shortest possible form: just the name of the theatre.
When the poster appeared on the streets of Paris on 1 January 1895 it caused an immediate sensation. Bernhardt was thrilled with the reaction and ordered four thousand copies of the poster in 1895 and 1896. She also gave Mucha a six-year contract to produce more. He went on to design posters for each successive Bernhardt play including La Dame aux Camelias, Lorenzaccio, Meda, La Tosca and Hamlet.
Mucha’s new found fame also brought Mucha commissions for many other companies. His clients included JOB cigarette papers, Ruinart Champagne, Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles. With his Champenois lithographic print, Mucha created a print that contained no text and wasn’t created to advertise anything. Published in large print runs and sold for a modest price, the ‘decorative panel’ was a new kind of product, a lithograph print to be used purely for decoration. Mucha’s first decorative panel series was The Seasons, published in 1896, depicting four different women in extremely decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. In 1897 he produced an individual decorative panel of a young woman in a floral setting, called Reverie, for Champenois. He also designed a calendar with a woman’s head surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. The Seasons series was followed by The Flowers, The Arts (1898), The Times of Day (1899), Precious Stones (1900), and The Moon and the Stars (1902).
Alphonse Mucha’s beautiful and romantic posters and paintings epitomise the Art Nouveau movement. Beautiful women posed against sensuous, botanical backdrops and the use of a palette of subdued pastels, florid lines, decorative elements, and natural forms all became Mucha’s signature trademark.
Other Vintage Champagne posters
With the advent of colour stone lithographic posters, French champagne producers began to commission a diverse range of artists to produce advertising material, especially posters. The perception of Champagne to symbolise decadence, indulgence and ‘the good life’ is, in no small part, down to the superb advertising skills of some of the world’s most famous fine art and poster artists.
Early Champagne posters by artists including Pierre Bonnard, Walter Crane, Alfons Mucha, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. One of the earliest surviving posters advertising Champagne is Bonnard’s 1891 France Champagne artwork. It features a young woman holding a glass of Champagne with the bubbles flowing out of the glass and across the bottom of the poster. Bubbly indeed. Another early Champagne poster is Walter Crane’s art nouveau-influenced poster from 1894, advertising Hau Champagne. It shows a flaxen-haired maiden, draped in Grecian robes and gracefully camouflaged with the vineyard around her. She is depicted carrying a Greek wine vessel as she offers a fizzing glass of Hau Champagne to the viewer. Some of our personal favorites include three by Alfonse Mucha. These include two for Moet and Chandon… his White Star Champagne poster and the Cremant Imperial Champagne poster make a great pair and look great framed. Another is one of Mucha’s Champagne Ruinart poster which was one of the artist’s earliest poster designs.
Vintage Beers, Wines & Spirits Alcohol Posters
Since the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of alcohol-related posters have been published. We are constantly adding new ones to our website, but we’ve selected ten of our personal favorites from our Food & Drink poster collection for you to look at. Despite the numbering, these appear in no particular order. You know the old adage, you can’t choose between your babies, you love them all equally. Well, that’s how we feel about these vintage alcohol prints.
- Monastine Liqueur de l’Abbaye de St Gratien – Eugene Oge – 1892
- Absinthe Robette – Privat-Livemont – 1896
- Maurin Quina – Leonetto Cappiello
- Anis Infernal – Leonetto Cappiello – 1905
- Porto Ramos-Pinto poster – Rene Vincent – 1920
- Martini Torino – Marcello Dudovich 1930
- Berger 45 Type Marseillais poster – Roland Ansieau – 1935
- My Goodness My Guinness Lion Poster – Gilroy – 1937
- De Venoge Champagne poster – Robert Falcucci – 1939
- Kinagin, le Vermouth au Quina et au Gin – EP – 1941
Posters perfect for your home bar, office, kitchen…
We offer a fascinating collection of reproduction beers, wines & spirits vintage posters all guaranteed to make you merry without you touching a drop. If you’re looking for a poster to brighten up your drinks evenings then this poster will make your home bar complete. All our posters are available in a shot glass (small A5) sizes to pitcher (large A1) sizes, which means there’s one available to fit your space. The colors are vibrant and really stand out and they’re printed on a 300gsm (pretty thick) high-quality silk paper and they’re cheaper than a round of drinks at the bar! They make the perfect statement and will be sure to impress all your friends! Place your drinks poster order today. Cheers!
