[Aesop’s] Le Lion et le Moucheron [The Lion and the Gnat] and Artiste Peintre: Peter Paulus (1577–1640).

[Aesop’s] Le Lion et le Moucheron [The Lion and the Gnat] and Artiste Peintre: Peter Paulus (1577–1640).

Paris:

Chocolat Guérin-Boutron,

[ca. 1900].

The latter part of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, saw remarkable advances in printing and movable paper elements. Léopold Verger, a Parisian printer, took great advantage of both and produced huge numbers of movable trade cards, especially for the Au Bon Marché department store. These two cards created for the chocolate company Guérin-Boutron are well represented in my collection with fifty-one Aesop fables and fifty-five historic fine painters. Pull the tab at the bottom of the abridged Aesop fable to reveal the moral of the tale. For the painters’ bios, pulling the transformation tab shows their most notable artwork.

Collection of Ellen G. K. Rubin.