Henri Thiriet (1873-1946)
Henry, Henry or just H. Thiriet, the Legendary Poster Artist
Who was Henri Thiriet? Today he is best known for his poster art in signature Art Nouveau style, yet he created much more. He illustrated books, designed calendars, and made quite a few 'classic' oil paintings and aquarelles as well.
In a way, we could say he was one of the early examples of multimedia masters. Well, to be honest, posters made him a legend and it's only fair to start the presentation of his life with them.
Posters
While Thiriet created hundreds of posters, his by far most successful theme was bicycles with Dayton and Omega being his best customers. Maybe he loved machines so much because his father was a mechanical?
Illustrations
Henry Thiriet illustrated numerous books. Fairy tales were roughly half of his contribution in this area. He created the majority of them in the second half of his creative era. Thiriet was a regular contributor of illustrations for Saint-Nicolas between 1898 and 1901. However, he illustrated most of the books (focusing on covers and vignettes) only after the First World War.
Here are two examples:
Thumbling is just one of the fairy tales in Perrault's collection of fairy tales. Henri created color images for all of them.
This illustration of Sleeping Beauty (in the Woods) was published as a picture book.
We need to mention his work for adult audiences too, especially for George Simenon's novels (sometimes published under the pen name Christian Brulls).
Calendar
In his twenties, Thiriet worked at one of the princes and lithographers in Paris, where he probably learned a lot about posters. We don't have reliable info about his formal education, though.
Vintage Postcard
We don't know much about his private life. He married in 1903 and had at least one daughter.
Menu
Yes, even a menu can benefit from proper design. If you are selling quality champagne, you have even more reasons for that.
Comics
Magazine
Newspaper
This is a typical line drawing as was popular at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century when photography wasn't developed enough to compete with art.
Painting
Another amusing fact: Henri served as a deputy mayor of his hometown Creteil from 1925 to 1942 where he also created frescoes for the Victor Hugo nursery school.That's all for now, folks. Come back later and tell your friends!
That's it!