During the 1890’s, the otherwise gray and bleak streets of Paris were decorated, as if for a festival, with colorful advertising posters by some of the finest artists of the time. Renowned art connoisseurs and critics as well as people in the streets, were delighted by this new contemporary art. The artists considered the advertising oil paintings the best way of exhibiting their talents to the widest public without compromising their artistic sensibilities, thus, Paris became an “open air museum. At the turn of the century it became fashionable to collect advertising oil paintings. The “open air museum” was brought into the home and was viewed as a charming and new way of decorating.
