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After apprenticing as a lithographer from 1849 and studying drawing, Chéret received his first major poster commission in 1858 for Jacques Offenbach’s operetta Orpheus in the Underworld (1858), and from 1859 to 1866 he designed posters and book jackets in London. During this period he also created packages for perfume manufacturer Eugène Rimmel, whose funding enabled Chéret to establish a lithography firm in Paris in 1866.
Owning his own firm allowed Chéret to maintain artistic control and to establish an innovative design approach. Most lithographers of the time commissioned an artist to create a poster design, which was then copied onto a stone by a skilled craftsman. Chéret, however, worked directly on the stone, using spirited brush lines, crosshatch, stipple, soft watercolour-like washes, and areas of flat colour to create a dynamic image. Throughout the 1870s and ’80s, his style evolved from one typical of Victorian graphics, that is, dominated by complex decoration, to a simpler, more dynamic approach in which compositions were dominated by large central figures, prominent hand-lettered titles, simplified backgrounds, and large areas of glowing colour and gestural textures. His artistic influences included the idyllic romances of the Rococo painters Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, the churning compositions of Baroque painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and the flat colour and stylized linear contours of Japanese woodblock prints.
In 1890 the French government awarded Chéret the Legion of Honour, citing his creation of an art form that advanced printing and also served the needs of commerce and industry. By the end of his career, Chéret had designed over one thousand posters for music halls, theatres, performers, and products including beverages, medicines, and lamp oil. A prominent generation of graphic designers and artists, including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha, built upon his example.
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