Chéret

Chéret is a French surname. The best-known bearer is Jules Chéret (1836–1932), a painter and lithographer who is widely regarded as the father of the modern poster. Born in Paris, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and began his career in painting before turning to commercial art. In the 1860s he developed chromolithography and produced posters that combined vivid color, decorative borders, and scenes of performers and urban life.

Chéret’s posters helped establish the poster as a legitimate form of mass communication and entertainment advertising during the Belle Époque. He built a workshop that trained many printers and designers, enabling the large-scale production and distribution of posters for theaters, music halls, and events. The stylistic traits of his work—bold imagery, readable typography, dynamic composition, and often idealized or glamorous figures—had a lasting influence on later poster artists and the development of European graphic art.

The surname Chéret may refer to other individuals with French origins, and the name is sometimes anglicized as Cheret. Today, Jules Chéret’s contributions are recognized as foundational to the evolution of commercial art and public visual culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.