Collecting glamour, Art Nouveau and Art Deco postcards

What to collect? 

The most popular subject on postcards are: Glamour, Art Nouveau, Art Deco

Pretty girls depicted on postcards

The term “glamour” covers all pretty girls depicted on picture postcards, from the head and shoulders study of the American beauty to the lingerie clad young thing in the Parisian boudoir, from the chromolithographic depiction of the finely dressed society lady to the photographic studio portrait of the nude. Possibly because the great majority of postcard artist and photographers were male, pretty girls far outnumber handsome young men in their work. Yet despite the fact that glamour cards in all their forms are fairly plentiful, there remains a large band of collectors looking for them.

Who is the most famous glamour artist?

The most famous of all glamour artists is Raphael Kirchner (see)
Postcards drawn by Kirchner were usually issued in series, each with a theme such as ‘Sunrays’, ‘Marionettes’, ‘Enfants de la Mer’, ‘The Mikado’, ‘The Geisha’, ‘Les Parfums’ etc. often in Art Nouveau style.
The collector may also notice that all the pretty girls depicted on Kirchner’s cards have similar faces, explained by the fact that he used his very beautiful wife Nina as his model.
One such card is entitled ‘Lelie Fumeuse d’Opium’, slightly prophetic as Nina did indeed take too much drugs and later died in a mental institution.

Other famous glamour illustrators

Other French artists whose postcards were produced in Paris during the Edwardian period were a.o. Milliere, Meunier, Pepin (see), Herouard (see), Penot.

Italian artists from the Edwardian to the 1920s era were responsible for producing a good glamour cards. Such like Nanni, Corbella (see), Mauzan (see), Colombo, Busi.

There were also American artist who had another style in glamour like Boileau (see) , Fisher (see) and Fidler ‘the American girl’.

Glamour girls on photographic postcards

Also on photographic cards the glamour girls were loved. Specially the nudes are collectable.
These were mostly made in French Studios.
Sometimes the models were shown in rather coy poses, others were more openly erotic.