Potage Maggi. ca. 1909

Artist: A. EHRMANN Size: 44 1/4 x 61 3/4 in./112.5 x 157 cm Imp. Maggi A sepia-and-black design within a splendid gold lithographic frame serves as a dual promotion for both Maggi soup and the twenty-ninth production of "Ruy Blas" at the Comédie Française. The poster-within-the-poster takes a quote from Act I, Scene 2 of the play where the protagonist–an indentured servant and a poet–happens upon a meal being cooked in a basement kitchen and senses "The aroma of the feast and a hint of love." In the poster-at-large, Ehrmann translates the scene in a more realistic vein, casting an elderly, somewhat destitute man in the role of the meal sniffer, who declares "That smells good! Lucky devils! It's surely Maggi soup."

B/ Slight tears at folds.