Salome 1898

Salome, created by Paul Berthon in 1898, is a haunting decorative panel from the artist's Courtisanes Celebres series, in which he gathered legendary femmes fatales of history and myth. It is a portrait built on paradox, and one of the most memorable images in Berthon's refined body of work.

Berthon presents Salome not as an obvious seductress but as a figure of unsettling contradiction. Her gaze is innocent, almost childlike, yet it belies the darkness of her legend, the story of the dance that demanded a prophet's head. Rendered with the artist's characteristic sensuality, she wears a delicately printed skirt and fine mesh, her hair dressed in the fashionable Cleo de Merode style of the day, while at her feet devastation quietly lingers. The tension between her sweet expression and the horror of her tale gives the panel its lasting, uneasy fascination.

Paul Berthon was a leading light of French Art Nouveau, a pupil in the circle influenced by Eugene Grasset, and a specialist in decorative lithographic panels intended purely as art for the home rather than as advertising. His refined palette of soft greens, muted golds and gentle mauves, together with his flowing ornamental line, made him one of the most collectable printmakers of the era, and Salome shows his gifts at their most seductive.

The work belongs to the golden age of the illustrated print, when colour lithography allowed artists to fill Paris with vivid imagery and to produce beautiful decorative panels that transformed everyday interiors. Alongside the great poster masters, artists like Berthon turned lithography into sought-after collectable art, prized for its elegance and craftsmanship.

As wall art, Salome brings a note of mysterious, dreamlike beauty to a room. Its soft, sophisticated colours and sinuous composition make an exquisite focal point above a console, dressing table or bed, and it slots gracefully into a gallery wall of Art Nouveau and decorative prints. It suits a bedroom, boudoir, study, hallway or elegant living room particularly well.

Each print is produced to order on premium 189 gsm museum-grade archival matte paper with fade-resistant pigment inks, for rich, gallery-quality colour and crisp detail. Choose your size from the drop-down menu: 8x12, 12x18, 16x24, 20x30 or 24x36 inches. Your poster is carefully packaged and shipped rolled in a sturdy tube, or sent flat for the smallest size, and the frame is not included so you can pair it with your own.

This is a faithful reproduction of the original lithograph, colour-matched and printed to archival standards rather than a flat mass-market copy. It preserves the texture and character of the antique original while arriving crisp, clean and ready to frame. Reproduced from a high-resolution scan, its subtle age-toning is part of its authentic historic character. It makes a memorable gift for lovers of Art Nouveau, decorative panels and Symbolist imagery, and a lasting way to bring a piece of poster history into a home, studio or workplace.