Original Poster, Cycles Gladiator, Bicycle, Breton Farmer, Black Cat Rabbit 1910

Artist: Leverd R.
Title: Gladiator
Date: 1910
Size (w x h): 46.9 x 63 in / 119 x 160 cm
Printer: Imp. E. Bougard, 3 rue Emile Gilbert, Paris
Materials and Techniques: Colour lithograph on paper
Linen backing: Yes
Condition: A (Normally designates a poster in very good condition. Colours are fresh and there is very little or no paper loss. Any imperfections are marginal and unnoticeable).

Additional Details:
Advertising poster designed by René Leverd in 1910 for the promotion of Gladiator brand cycles.
The Gladiator Cycles company, then Gladiator-Clément (1896) is a French company manufacturing cycles and automobiles established in Pré-Saint-Gervais between 1891 and 1920. In 1895, Gladiator produced its first motorized tricycle whose combustion was based of naphtha. In 1896, Adolphe Clément, Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, and Harry John Lawson, associated with Harvey du Cros, owner of Dunlop, take stakes in the company and undertake to create a conglomerate.
René Leverd is a French watercolourist, poster artist and illustrator. He received a silver medal at the Salon des artistes français of 1891, and many other awards in the salons.
On the poster, a Breton farmer strolls on a bicycle on the Breton coast. She is probably coming back from the village market, since fruits, vegetables and a rabbit/hare are in her basket. Behind her, we see a rural warden in anachronistic clothes. Indeed, the cocked hat disappeared in favor of the kepi in 1840. In the distance, a black cat runs after the farmer’s wife (wooden clogs and Breton headdress).

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