Fleur Des Nieges 1905

This is a poster by Leonetto Cappiello advertising Biscuits Pernot, its title is Fleur Des Nieges. The lettering at the top evokes the chilling atmosphere of a snowy day, as icy as the biscuit boxes being carried. I wonder what it might have been like for Cappiello to make this picture, this advert. It’s an image of leisure and luxury. Are we looking at stage actresses, or are they just women with biscuits? It makes me think about Toulouse Lautrec and all of those paintings of Parisian bars. Perhaps Cappiello was thinking about those too. The line that describes the women’s robes is so bold! What a great device: to flatten them and not worry too much about tonal gradations. But at the same time there are cross-hatched areas, like on the hill behind them, to suggest some kind of depth. I love that tension between flatness and depth, how it pushes and pulls the eye. And that’s what painting is, right? A series of marks that converse with each other and with paintings that have come before.