Rudge c.1896 Poster — Marque sans Rivale, France Russie

— Poster —
MARQUE
SANS
RIVALE

FRANCE
RUSSIE

CYCLES RUDGE

DUNCAN SUBERBIE & Cie.

[An empty oval is printed at the foot of the sheet for the agent’s name.]

[Printed at the lower right:]

LITH. F. APPEL, PARIS

[The museum’s CARNAVALET stamp is struck on the paper at the lower right.]

[A rider in a cap, a dark jacket and breeches with yellow stockings pedals a diamond-frame bicycle across the face of a great globe hung in a starry blue night. FRANCE is lettered over western Europe in red and RUSSIE over the east in yellow, and a white ring circles the globe like a planet’s, carrying CYCLES RUDGE in black capitals.

The Franco-Russian alliance was the diplomatic event of the mid-1890s, celebrated in the streets of Paris when the Russian fleet called at Toulon in 1893 and again at the tsar’s state visit in 1896. Duncan, Suberbie and Company, Rudge’s agents in Paris, put the alliance on a poster: an English machine, sold in France, riding across the map from one ally to the other.]