There have been a few times in the recent past when some illustrators were so well known and liked that they were used as pitchmen in national advertising campaigns for non-art related products. And today there are still a few artists who are somehow household names, though usually as the result of infamy rather than through garnered admiration. But can you imagine a time when artists were so much a part of popular culture, that hundreds of their images and biographies were collected in much the same way that a young (or not so young) sports fan might collect baseball cards?
In 1898, the French chain-store Félix Potin put out the first of their collector series of books, Célébrités Contemporaines, which provided space for gluing down images of 500 of the day's most famous public figures (subsequent editions made space for 510 celebrities). The categories in each book included sports stars, royalty, actors, politicians, war heroes, writers, scientists, and, of course, painters and sculptors. The trade cards themselves, which were originally true, high-quality, photographic prints signed by well-known photographic studios¹, were obtained through the purchase of one-pound boxes of Félix Potin Chocolates. It is unclear, however, how many pounds of chocolate had to be consumed to complete each collection.
The collectors' books were an immediate success, and Félix Potin continued to produce them for many years. The first edition remained in print until 1908, while the second edition, featuring many new celebrities was released in 1907. The third and final collection of celebrities made its debut in 1922, and seems to have remained in print into the early 1950s, when the company was sold, and the series discontinued. Completed Célébrités books are now sometimes available through auction services like ebay, but more than likely, the books have been cut apart, and the images must be purchased individually.
Personally, I would love to see this idea revived. Wouldn't it be great to see kids putting Nelson Shanks cards in the spokes of their bicycle wheels, comparing Prix de West stats for Morgan Weistling and Howard Terpning, or even using a David Gluck to scrape the dirt from their cleats? Wouldn't it be great if knowledge of art and artists were just that ubiquitous? Perhaps I'll just have to make my own cards for my kids . . .
 |
| A sample card from the second edition in 1907, including the artist's biography. |
 |
| There was a decided bias in favor of French artists, but sometimes a foreign national like Alfred Stevens, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, or Vasily Vasilyevich Vereshchagin would appear, if they were significantly known abroad. |
 |
| A page from the third collection of Félix Potin's Célébrités Contemporaines (1922) |
