Les Maîtres de l'Affiche (The Masters of the Poster) is one of the most prestigious and influential art publications in history. Its 256 color plates have preserved for each succeeding generation a wide- ranging selection of outstanding posters from the turn of the century, when the popular art form had reached its first peak. This Dover edition is the first complete republication of the legendary Maîtres set to devote a full large page to each plate.Les Maîtres de l'Affiche was issued as separate numbered sheets measuring 11 1/4 x 15 1/2 inches. Every month for 60 months, from December 1895 through November 1900, subscribers received a wrapper containing four consecutively numbered poster reproductions. On 16 occasions, the monthly wrapper also contained a bonus plate, not a poster reproduction but a specially created art lithograph. Jules Chéret, father of the modern poster, emerged with the lion's share of the plates, 60 of the 240 numbered poster reproductions and 7 of the 16 unnumbered bonus plates. Of the 96 artists represented in Les Maîtres de l'Affiche, some were preeminent painters and printmakers at various stages of their careers: Toulouse-Lautrec, Denis, Bonnard, Vallotton, Puvis de Chavannes. Others were famous illustrators and cartoonists of the period, still well known to art collectors and bibliophiles: Forain, Caran d'Ache, Ibels, Willete, Boutet de Monvel, Léandre. But there were also all those whose names say