Jean Alexis Rouchon and the evolution of poster printing: from wallpaper techniques to public space advertising in Paris, 1844–1865

Jean Alexis Rouchon (1794–1878) was initially a wallpaper printer in Paris. In 1844 and 1851, he registered patents concerning “the application of printing on wallpaper to the color printing of posters”. The process consists of engraving wooden boards for each color, applied alternately to the paper support — a classic wallpaper printing process until the invention of the cylinder. It allows the use of movable letters also engraved on wood, the size of the posters not allowing the use of lead characters. The posters published by Rouchon are among the first to be affixed to the walls of France in hitherto unusual formats (160 cm in height on average) and benefiting from polychrome printing. His beginnings corresponded to the end of the romantic wave and he published a few posters announcing the release of works illustrated by designers such as Bertall, Balzac’s official illustrator. But if the spirit remains, the form differs clearly from the lithographs of previous decades, intended to decorate the interior of bookstores rather than the street. The wallpaper process requires a simplification of the line, imposes the practice of flat areas (even if some gradients are made) and generates powerful color contrasts. The typography is also without embellishments, drawing from a fairly restricted register, favoring stick characters and Egyptian characters, accompanied by a few Norman ones. This gives Rouchon’s production, several hundred creations in nearly twenty years, a unique signage dimension, helping to popularize the use of antiques and mechanics in public spaces. (In 1847, the first enameled cast iron plaques appeared in Paris bearing the names of the streets in white on a dark blue background). Many “novelty stores”, precursors of department stores, use its printing press, and the posters take up the motifs of their brands, adding slogans and advertisements. Variety theaters and various shows also order from him, as do brands of food products, manufacturers of sheds or wooden chalets, etc. Rouchon is part of the ancestral tradition of popular imagery as much as he embodies the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Other publishers tried to compete with it through the emerging color lithography, such as the Van Geylen house in Paris, which produced posters in a similar vein. Rouchon worked until the end of the Second Empire, then his process became obsolete with the appearance of chromolithography.

Documents: Musée de la Publicité, and Forney Library.