This is a poster advertising the lamp oil Saxoléine. Jules Chéret (1836-1932) trained in the printing trade. But his artistic ambitions led him to experiment with lithography (printing from stone) and to produce large-scale posters in a wide range of colours. These had both economic and aesthetic success. Chéret designed more than 1,000 posters in the first 20 years of his press. He always drew directly on the stone, even when he handed over the everyday press work to the printers Chaix in 1881.