By the time the English-born artist Louis Rhead designed this poster advertising an exhibition of 60 of his own posters at the Salon des Cent in Paris in 1897, he had been working in New York for nearly 15 years and was already a highly esteemed graphic designer. In fact, he was the only American artist invited to display at the Salon, a series of sale exhibitions of contemporary posters and prints by its distinguished members, typically held on the premises of La Plume magazine in Paris. Eugène Grasset, the celebrated Swiss-French Art Nouveau artist, was one of these members and his images of ethereal women with long, flowing hair described in sinuous lines inspired many similar figures in Rhead’s work, not least this one. Rhead also used the motif of a female figure holding a palette in his poster advertising a London exhibition of his own works in 1896.