Carnival! Mackintosh’s toffee de luxe 1930

Jean d'Ylen's poster for Mackintosh's toffee, presumably made with lithographic inks, depicts a carnival scene in high contrast. I bet d'Ylen was thinking about the theatre when he composed this picture. I can imagine d'Ylen, with a steady hand, carefully layering each colour, watching as the harlequin's playful costume and the dancer's golden dress emerge from the dark ground. The colour is so controlled, with the black background really making the characters pop. It's all about the surface, isn’t it? That flat plane where colour and shape meet to create this little drama. The slight tilt of the figures reminds me of some Cubist portraits, where everything's a bit off-kilter. It makes me wonder if d’Ylen was looking at Picasso or Braque, and thinking about how to bring that sense of dynamism into commercial art. It’s like a conversation across time, artists riffing off each other. Ultimately, there's a feeling of freedom in this work. It’s a reminder that painting can be a space of play, where anything is possible.