Considered the creator of the modern approach to poster making, Jules Cheret did work with coloration and perspective that "caused a revolution, a color revolution" and likely inspired the Fauve painters whose colorful works were first publicly exhibited in 1933, the year after his death. Because of his innovations, "there was fun and fantasy, glimpses of laughter, whirling of dancers decorating the kiosks of Paris, dazzling the senses and creating a movement of gaiety that had not existed before."

Jules Cheret, who was a painter in oil and pastel as well as lithographer, was raised in Paris in a poverty level family of artistans. His schooling ended when he was age 13, and his father, who was a typographe...