Jules Chéret (1836-1932), Vin Mariani, [1895]. Color lithograph. Graphic Arts GC077 French prints
In 1894, Angelo Mariani (1821-1873) commissioned a poster (left) from the leading French lithographer Jules Chéret (1836-1932) to advertise a medicinal tonic made from Bordeaux wine soaked with coca leaves. Mariani claimed the drink would supply extra energy, vitality, and general good health.
Newspaper advertising stressed the “wonderful properties of Coca are now very generally known. …Besides its action as a general tonic, [Vin Mariani] has been found of especial use in Diseases of the Stomach and of the Respiratory and Vocal Organs. …It is especially adapted, on account of its nice taste, for Children.”
To read more about Mariani’s wine, see his publication Coca and Its Therapeutic Application (New York: J. N. Jaros, 1890). Firestone Library (F) RS165.C5 M375 1890.
After the poster was released, a second print (see above) was prepared for a January 6, 1895 supplement to the weekly Le Courrier français: littérature, beaux-arts, théâtres, médecine, finance (Paris: Jules Roques, 1884-1908). This variant image came with a poem by Hughes Delorme:
Regardez bondir en plein ciel
La superbe danseuse rousse
Tenant de l’index et du pouce
Le nectar providentiel:
Rieuse de s’être grisée,
elle verse toujours, encor…
La fraiche clarté du décor
Fait resplendir sa chair rosée;
Sa chair que l’on pairait cher; et
Qui ne frissonne, hélas! qu’en rêve;
Charme furif; vision brève
Que pour nous évoqua Chéret.
Pour avoir sa grâce robuste,
—O ballerines d’Opéra
Sur qui la fatigue opéra
Le morne écroulement du buste,—
Il vous faut, le travail fini
Les gazes une fois rangées,
Avaler quatre ou cinq gorgées
du bon Vin de Mariani.
See plates 1119-1124 in Jules Chéret (1836-1932), La Belle Époque de Jules Chéret: de l’affiche au décor (Paris: Les Arts décoratifs/BNF, 2010). Firestone Library (F) Oversize ND553.C582 B374 2010q.
